On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease. This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat. I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes, @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.
You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?
I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
Because what you say is overly simplified. There is a benefit to catching delta, recovering and gaining some protection against omicron. Disease is capricious. It’s possible that someone who would survive delta, might succumb to omicron, albeit omicron is likely intrinsically milder. There is also a population benefit to getting unvaccinated folk vaccinated via infection, if they won’t volunteer their arms. You seem stuck in cases as the most important measure. In reality many of most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service. For some, they will feel like shit, and say ‘this is not mild’. But they will have some poor days and get better. We have never tested and reported daily flu infections. And you know, some people who take the flu jab get flu, but we don’t say it’s pointless. I think you think you are making strong logical arguments, but it comes over more as Barack room lawyer.
"most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service."
Sure - Omicron is not the health threat that Delta was. And yet we had 30-40k cases per day for months of Delta which was not the milder disease you speak of. And the people who had Delta are at risk of catching Omicron hence the need to get a booster jab in their arms very quiickly.
Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?
Teslas are easy because of the scanmytesla app. With that and an OBD2 dongle you can get stacks of information including battery health, which is the main thing you care about.
You can also get an idea of battery condition by charging to 100% and see what range it predicts compared the the WLTP rating.
That comment inadvertently brings up another issue - when buying a car that’s connected to a phone that works as the key, or has a service account associated with it, make sure you follow the manufacturer’s process to transfer everything to the new owner and de-activate the old owner.
Cost of used cars is just incredible at the moment. Have some friends who saved up during the pandemic to enjoy some freedom once it was over and they have all given up on it.
Glad I bought mine last year. My calcs made buying with cash the only sensible option.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
Yes, I was talking to a senior civil servant the other day who agreed that the 3-option trick was common, though dangerous when overplayed, since some politicians would pick the option they stuck in which they'd thought was too crazy to contemplate. She felt that as she'd specialised in the area for years it was reasonable to have a view on what was best, but you should be careful to make sure that all the options were reasonable possibilities to consider.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
It does? Then why the national emergency crash booster program? If being double vaccinated and / or past infected gave the same protections as they did for Delta et al then we wouldn't be trying to do a million jabs a day. The scientists are clear that Omicron renders the previous vaccines less effective. You seem to be saying they are wrong.
To play the game, you now say less effective, not does care. That’s the point. Boosting is likely to do several things. One, it may help us restrict the size of this wave (probably already is, as the cases are hugely skewed to the young so far, and they are less likely to be vaccinated and/or boosted). Secondly it will allow more frail individuals to encounter omicron in a better position to fight it off. This is key, as it can clearly still kill people. I’d argue it’s also concentrated minds a bit of the unvacccintaed, who are now coming forward.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
It does? Then why the national emergency crash booster program? If being double vaccinated and / or past infected gave the same protections as they did for Delta et al then we wouldn't be trying to do a million jabs a day. The scientists are clear that Omicron renders the previous vaccines less effective. You seem to be saying they are wrong.
It doesn't make you totally immune, I am not suggesting that. Having either a vaccination or a prior infection does certainly significantly reduce the risk. You are making it sound like Omicron totally ignores either vaccination or prior infection.
No I'm not. I'm saying that Omicron is perfectly capable of infecting people who are double vaccinated or had a prior variant. You couldn't say the same for those other variants - even Delta. Double vaxxed gave us significant protection, until Omicron came along and now we all need boosters as the same protection isn't there.
So Omicron - unlike Delta - doesn't care much that you have been fully vaccinated or recovered. It wants you anyway and it has the ability to do so.
Our salvation is that three doses reinstates the protections we need. For a while. Then we will seemingly need a 4th jab. Which is fine - if we need to get a booster every number of months to stay largely protected then we do so and Covid ceases to be the mega threat that it is.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease. This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat. I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes, @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.
You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?
I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
Because what you say is overly simplified. There is a benefit to catching delta, recovering and gaining some protection against omicron. Disease is capricious. It’s possible that someone who would survive delta, might succumb to omicron, albeit omicron is likely intrinsically milder. There is also a population benefit to getting unvaccinated folk vaccinated via infection, if they won’t volunteer their arms. You seem stuck in cases as the most important measure. In reality many of most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service. For some, they will feel like shit, and say ‘this is not mild’. But they will have some poor days and get better. We have never tested and reported daily flu infections. And you know, some people who take the flu jab get flu, but we don’t say it’s pointless. I think you think you are making strong logical arguments, but it comes over more as Barack room lawyer.
"most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service."
Sure - Omicron is not the health threat that Delta was. And yet we had 30-40k cases per day for months of Delta which was not the milder disease you speak of. And the people who had Delta are at risk of catching Omicron hence the need to get a booster jab in their arms very quiickly.
Not all infections are the same. After delta, it’s likely your next encounter will be trivial. Not guaranteed, but likely.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
Oh indeed, it’s the Cabinet running the show now, rather than the PM.
The next couple of months might be good news for him on the virus front, but after that, the news is going to be energy price rises and local election defeats.
That’s the key point IMHO
I think things get better for the government from here on. The last few weeks have been something of a perfect storm. However, the overall impact has been to permanently lower the ceiling - I don’t see the Tories getting above 38 at best now.
However, the fortunately of the government are no longer the fortunates of Boris. He’s got no way back in the public eye. And in any event, why would the Cabinet give him back his power? He’s trussed like a turkey - which ambitious underling is going to do a deal with him confident that he can deliver. They will all be positioning themselves close to his likely successors. He will be executed at a time to be determined, but until then he is “in office but not in power”
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
Sorry, what is laughable? I'm trying to understand what you mean when you say "doesn't care much", when all evidence suggests it in fact does care, quite a lot.
Doesn't care much in that you can be double vaccinated and still be at significant risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program. Doesn't care much in that you can have had a previous variant and yet still be at risk of contracting it. Hence the national emergency crash booster program.
Everyone is going to catch it, the question is what happens when you do catch it. Omicron certainly cares about whether you've had a vaccination or a prior infection at that point.
It does? Then why the national emergency crash booster program? If being double vaccinated and / or past infected gave the same protections as they did for Delta et al then we wouldn't be trying to do a million jabs a day. The scientists are clear that Omicron renders the previous vaccines less effective. You seem to be saying they are wrong.
It doesn't make you totally immune, I am not suggesting that. Having either a vaccination or a prior infection does certainly significantly reduce the risk. You are making it sound like Omicron totally ignores either vaccination or prior infection.
No I'm not. I'm saying that Omicron is perfectly capable of infecting people who are double vaccinated or had a prior variant. You couldn't say the same for those other variants - even Delta. Double vaxxed gave us significant protection, until Omicron came along and now we all need boosters as the same protection isn't there.
So Omicron - unlike Delta - doesn't care much that you have been fully vaccinated or recovered. It wants you anyway and it has the ability to do so.
But that's not the same as saying it "doesn't care" whether you have had a vaccination, or have had a prior infection. It certainly cares, because both of those things significantly reduce the risk of hospitalisation or death.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease. This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat. I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes, @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.
You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?
I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
Because what you say is overly simplified. There is a benefit to catching delta, recovering and gaining some protection against omicron. Disease is capricious. It’s possible that someone who would survive delta, might succumb to omicron, albeit omicron is likely intrinsically milder. There is also a population benefit to getting unvaccinated folk vaccinated via infection, if they won’t volunteer their arms. You seem stuck in cases as the most important measure. In reality many of most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service. For some, they will feel like shit, and say ‘this is not mild’. But they will have some poor days and get better. We have never tested and reported daily flu infections. And you know, some people who take the flu jab get flu, but we don’t say it’s pointless. I think you think you are making strong logical arguments, but it comes over more as Barack room lawyer.
"most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service."
Sure - Omicron is not the health threat that Delta was. And yet we had 30-40k cases per day for months of Delta which was not the milder disease you speak of. And the people who had Delta are at risk of catching Omicron hence the need to get a booster jab in their arms very quiickly.
Also for many the delta infections were mild. The children for a start. I know some have died, and been seriously ill. That’s on the jcvi, and the politicians for not pressing them sooner. But we’d know if hundreds/thousands of kids were dying. In vaccinated adults most recover fine. They have been documenting this on pb for months. No one has died, or indeed gone to hospital for Covid from pb have they?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease. This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat. I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes, @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.
You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?
I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
Because what you say is overly simplified. There is a benefit to catching delta, recovering and gaining some protection against omicron. Disease is capricious. It’s possible that someone who would survive delta, might succumb to omicron, albeit omicron is likely intrinsically milder. There is also a population benefit to getting unvaccinated folk vaccinated via infection, if they won’t volunteer their arms. You seem stuck in cases as the most important measure. In reality many of most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service. For some, they will feel like shit, and say ‘this is not mild’. But they will have some poor days and get better. We have never tested and reported daily flu infections. And you know, some people who take the flu jab get flu, but we don’t say it’s pointless. I think you think you are making strong logical arguments, but it comes over more as Barack room lawyer.
"most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service."
Sure - Omicron is not the health threat that Delta was. And yet we had 30-40k cases per day for months of Delta which was not the milder disease you speak of. And the people who had Delta are at risk of catching Omicron hence the need to get a booster jab in their arms very quiickly.
Not all infections are the same. After delta, it’s likely your next encounter will be trivial. Not guaranteed, but likely.
But Omicron does that whether you've had Delta or not. Its milder. Why expose millions to Delta to give them a "trivial" encounter with Omicron when Omicron is trivial compared to Delta already?
In recent years, the number of computers on a small city car is now what was on an S-Class of a decade ago. They’ve deliberately make the computers a pain in the arse to program, and the dealer’s computers are really expensive to reduce the supply of them at independent garages.
The dealer software always ends up on the murkier reaches of the Internet and you can do A LOT with by rewriting ECU key values through OBD2. I removed the top speed limit on my 997 (they retarded ignition timing in 6th gear to knock the top off the power curve to stop it going over 190mph) that way but have never had the opportunity to take advantage of it.
Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?
Why? Lease a new one. From £225 per month. Under warranty so no risk of catastrophic failure. There are specialist EV leasing companies.
If I was to buy a used one for a low price I would stick to a Nissan Leaf as it is proven technology.
Isn't leasing a new one more expensive than buying 2nd hand? I have no attachment to having a new car.
Basically I want a car, I would ideally never set foot in a garage, would prefer electric, will probably drive it a couple of times a week max.
I was in your position back in April. The problem with 2nd hand electric is thar they hold their value, also cheaper ones have significantly lower range. New ones are currently too expensive but soon there will be more choice and prices will become more reasonable. Search BYD dolphin for example. My answer was to buy a hybrid as a stop gap.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Who said it was Scotland specific? I said go look at Germany. Or a stack of other countries who all maintained a mask mandate and had very low infection levels.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
The virus “cares” about replication. Infection and transmissibility is what matters. The consequences of transmission are irrelevant
Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?
Teslas are easy because of the scanmytesla app. With that and an OBD2 dongle you can get stacks of information including battery health, which is the main thing you care about.
You can also get an idea of battery condition by charging to 100% and see what range it predicts compared the the WLTP rating.
That comment inadvertently brings up another issue - when buying a car that’s connected to a phone that works as the key, or has a service account associated with it, make sure you follow the manufacturer’s process to transfer everything to the new owner and de-activate the old owner.
Good point. Also with Teslas it's very important to plug it into a Supercharger and make sure it charges. If a Tesla has been written off, stolen or had its PCS/HVC fucked around with then its VIN will not validate to the Supercharger network and it won't charge.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
Hmmm.
One other consideration is that if the life of a car is cut in half that isn't going to do its environmental credentials any good at all.
What's surely needed is a car which can have new batteries put in easily so they can last considerably longer.
Edit - incidentally I agree with you, I bought second hand last year when my old faithful gave up after 12 years, because the economics of a new car didn't stack up by comparison. However, (1) that was me as a cash buyer - bring financing in and the equation changes and (2) where would we get second hand cars from if people didn't buy new?
Why do you think modern cars won't last? They are more reliable and don't rust. Far from depreciation, used car prices have been highly buoyant.
I drive a Fiat 500 that I have had from new, and currently 13 years and 102 000 miles. Starts first time, doesn't burn oil, no rust at all. Apart from minor drinks in the bodywork it looks and drives like new.
Mrs F’s 500c sat down and died earlier this year after seven years from new. Not economic to fix.
She previously had a Citroen C3 Pluriel, which was basically indestructible and still going strong at 130,000 miles. Motoring journalists love to include the Pluriel in their “10 Worst Cars Ever” lists, which tells you how much they know.
Frankly I’d be happy if every single car on the planet were crushed into a small metal cube and launched into orbit but there you go.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
The virus “cares” about replication. Infection and transmissibility is what matters. The consequences of transmission are irrelevant
A simple point that seems beyond Rob and a few others. It wants to replicate. What happens to the thing it replicates in isn't its concern. Being able to replicate in a person who is fully vaccinated is all it cares about. Other strains had far less success replicating in fully vaccinated hosts. Omicron doesn't care much two doses of the vaccine as it can come in and party anyway.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
Pretty sure there were other restrictions in Western Europe besides masks. Ireland, for example, only reopened nightclubs at the end of October, for example, more than three months after they'd been open in England.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
I get that there will be some leakage over the border, but the idea that the maskless English were seeding Covid up here at such a rate as to completely negate what you consider a highly effective mask policy is nonsense.
It's schools (see the September spike). That's it. It's unavoidable, unless you close them.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
The virus “cares” about replication. Infection and transmissibility is what matters. The consequences of transmission are irrelevant
A simple point that seems beyond Rob and a few others. It wants to replicate. What happens to the thing it replicates in isn't its concern. Being able to replicate in a person who is fully vaccinated is all it cares about. Other strains had far less success replicating in fully vaccinated hosts. Omicron doesn't care much two doses of the vaccine as it can come in and party anyway.
And, generally speaking, why should we care that Omicron does this either?
With Omicron less virulent, and two vaccine doses providing good protection against hospitalisation and death, it just isn't that deadly that we should care enough to impose extraordinary restrictions on our daily lives.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
And just further to this, it's quite stark now how different the attitude in Scotland is to RUK, despite Leitch etc basically going with the "learn to live with it line".
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
You and I both live up here - don't you feel like we also learned to live with it? I can't think of anything that the mask mandate has impeded me doing. It isn't that Scotland hasn't learned to live with it and England has.
Again, agree, but the way the questions are posed up here is certainly different. There is a dissonance between what is happening with our restrictions (which has been near enough let it rip in 2021, as demonstrated by Scot case numbers) and the way people talk about it.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
Germany and France have both recently been at record case levels
Anyone got any advice on buying a second hand electric car?
Teslas are easy because of the scanmytesla app. With that and an OBD2 dongle you can get stacks of information including battery health, which is the main thing you care about.
You can also get an idea of battery condition by charging to 100% and see what range it predicts compared the the WLTP rating.
That comment inadvertently brings up another issue - when buying a car that’s connected to a phone that works as the key, or has a service account associated with it, make sure you follow the manufacturer’s process to transfer everything to the new owner and de-activate the old owner.
Good point. Also with Teslas it's very important to plug it into a Supercharger and make sure it charges. If a Tesla has been written off, stolen or had its PCS/HVC fucked around with then its VIN will not validate to the Supercharger network and it won't charge.
There were also a lot of Teslas written off for only minor damage, due to a lack of availability of spare parts. These then ended up fixed later on, but still won’t connect to the Superchargers.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Who said it was Scotland specific? I said go look at Germany. Or a stack of other countries who all maintained a mask mandate and had very low infection levels.
No, but you did suggest that Scotland's exemplary gagging policy had been undone by invading hordes crossing from Carlisle to Dumfries. It's all a bit silly.
Besides which, forcing schoolchildren to cover their mouths with pieces of blue paper didn't do very much to stop the enormous back-to-school spike in cases in September, now did it?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
I am somewhat concerned when we have decided that the scientists and the scientific modellers are faulty and Government Civil Servants are drawing the wrong conclusions from that faulty data.
Steve Baker and JRM on the other hand understanding the science and carefully balancing the Covid data against the economic negatives of Covid restrictions perfectly, appears counter- intuitive to me. I hope they have called it right.
I also find it somewhat concerning that the two front runners jockeying for Johnson's job have twigged that the more hawkish they are towards any Covid restrictions the more favour they curry within the Conservative Party.
"hopes are higher for Joe Biden in his position as President of the United States Half (51%) think it is unlikely that he will lose his job before the year is done"
All this (together with expectations of a GE) shows is that the public have no knowledge whatsoever of the minutiae of politics.
People aren't interested. Which is why people just vote on overall big picture general impression. None of the detail matters.
It's also why I don't think what happens with the pandemic or lockdowns will have any impact on voting intention. Most people simply don't think it's a political issue.
Agreed. The poll shows an amazingly downbeat attitude to everything, but will certainly be based on just casual impressions. I always remember a schoolteacher asking a bemused friend of mine, "I forget, who is the current British President?" - when we fret about how people will interpret a bar chart, one has to keep her in mind as a model for many.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
Our expert from the desert, your crystal ball tell you that I presume.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
Not really true. That some who have had delta can be reinfected with omicron does not mean that they are Covid naive at that point. Reinfection is far less likely to lead to serious illness than a first encounter with a virus. So omicron does ‘care’ about double vaccination and previous infection in the sense that protection persists for serious disease. This is the problem with too much reporting and discussion of the science of the pandemic. The immune system is a lot more complex than jus5 neutralising antibodies. Of course these decline after recovery from infection, or vaccination. You wouldn’t want the body endlessly churning out antibodies for everything it encounters - there would be a cost. Rather the immune system retains a memory of infection, and when needed can jump into action to produce the required cells to tackle the threat. I know you mock the idea of an exit wave. But the wave is about the rise in cases that inevitably occur when restrictions are removed. They are the yin to the yang of infections falling when restrictions are applied. Yes, our wave of cases did not subside, but in terms of serious disease and death, the nation is vastly better off. In addition the extra infections, often to anti-Vaxers will be having an effect, certainly in serious outcomes, @RochdalePioneers, I respect your knowledge of supply chains, and you speak eloquently about the issues we face in those fields. I fear you let yourself down a bit in your comments on the pandemic.
I know nothing about viruses - have I not said so repeatedly? But then again, most of the people making black and white posts about Covid also know nothing about them. "Here's what I read on the internet" is not knowing about it to any expert level.
You mention that I mock the idea of an exit wave then agree that it was not a wave or an exit. Again, if Omicron is significantly milder than Delta, and having Delta means that you can still catch Omicron, what was the point in exposing people to Delta? So that their experience of the milder strain is milder than the nastier strain they have just had?
I'm not making any case about the virus, but about your logic. I am qualified as a layperson to say "that makes no sense".
Because what you say is overly simplified. There is a benefit to catching delta, recovering and gaining some protection against omicron. Disease is capricious. It’s possible that someone who would survive delta, might succumb to omicron, albeit omicron is likely intrinsically milder. There is also a population benefit to getting unvaccinated folk vaccinated via infection, if they won’t volunteer their arms. You seem stuck in cases as the most important measure. In reality many of most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service. For some, they will feel like shit, and say ‘this is not mild’. But they will have some poor days and get better. We have never tested and reported daily flu infections. And you know, some people who take the flu jab get flu, but we don’t say it’s pointless. I think you think you are making strong logical arguments, but it comes over more as Barack room lawyer.
"most of the 122K cases reported on Friday will be extremely mild, or at least will not require the use of the health service."
Sure - Omicron is not the health threat that Delta was. And yet we had 30-40k cases per day for months of Delta which was not the milder disease you speak of. And the people who had Delta are at risk of catching Omicron hence the need to get a booster jab in their arms very quiickly.
Not all infections are the same. After delta, it’s likely your next encounter will be trivial. Not guaranteed, but likely.
But Omicron does that whether you've had Delta or not. Its milder. Why expose millions to Delta to give them a "trivial" encounter with Omicron when Omicron is trivial compared to Delta already?
Because it’s probably not that much milder, certainly for the Unvaccintaed.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
True, but it's not just the civil servants - the whole political machine is stuck in a 'restrictions' mindset, which is the safest choice - and will find it difficult to shake this off as we pull out of the pandemic. Yet there'll be a dividend for the countries that open up earliest, but the risks for any politician or party calling it too early are considerable.
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
I had an old car whose piston went through the canshaft 20 years ago and it's been sitting in a garage ever since with the proprietor unable to get parts. Slowly it's condition deteriorated and I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to buy it as a project. I'd have been happy to accept £5-8,000. I looked online to see if anyone could sell a car that needed a load of work in the condition it was in. I found a place near Heathrow called Historics and they said they'd put it in their August auction.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
Germany and France have both recently been at record case levels
Germany has been posting 400-500 deaths a day, so its low case numbers are almost certainly the result of under-testing.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
Germany and France have both recently been at record case levels
Indeed. As we are. Something that various posters were shrilly assuring us would not happen because we were so smart to let Delta rip and they were so stupid not to.
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
I had an old car whose piston went through the canshaft 20 years ago and it's been sitting in a garage ever since with the proprietor unable to get parts. Slowly it's condition deteriorated and I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to buy it as a project. I'd have been happy to accept £5-8,000. I looked online to see if anyone could sell a car that needed a load of work in the condition it was in. I found a place near Heathrow called Historics and they said they'd put it in their August auction.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
Presumably an E-Type Jag, rather than an Austin Montego?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Who said it was Scotland specific? I said go look at Germany. Or a stack of other countries who all maintained a mask mandate and had very low infection levels.
No, but you did suggest that Scotland's exemplary gagging policy had been undone by invading hordes crossing from Carlisle to Dumfries. It's all a bit silly.
Besides which, forcing schoolchildren to cover their mouths with pieces of blue paper didn't do very much to stop the enormous back-to-school spike in cases in September, now did it?
Lets take Highland as the example of the power of tourism to spread Covid. During all the previous phases of the virus they had minimal cases. Then we hit summer 2021, tourists flocked in (from elsewhere in Scotland as well as England and every other country) and cases soared.
I agree that you can't completely stop it - thats why I am not and never have been making a zero Covid case. But we can dodge some of the infection vectors even if not all of them.
I assume you are referring to schools in England, not Scotland, where both restrictions and attitudes are very different. Scottish schools go back in early mid August, not September.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
I am somewhat concerned when we have decided that the scientists and the scientific modellers are faulty and Government Civil Servants are drawing the wrong conclusions from that faulty data.
Steve Baker and JRM on the other hand understanding the science and carefully balancing the Covid data against the economic negatives of Covid restrictions perfectly, appears counter- intuitive to me. I hope they have called it right.
I also find it somewhat concerning that the two front runners jockeying for Johnson's job have twigged that the more hawkish they are towards any Covid restrictions the more favour they curry within the Conservative Party.
I think the modellers have been used by the civil service, pace @NickPalmer’s comment. As a fellow scientist I am always wary of contact with the media in particular, and the general public to some extent. The ability for crossed wires to cause issues is always there. Some of the modelling seems nonsensical. It maybe that they are just testing how wide the envelope is. I suspect that there is some collusion though, with some modellers believing we need tough restrictions, and getting that message to the press ‘anonymously’. I can understand why people want to protect the nhs. After all, it’s the people that work in it and those treated by it that are being protected. But the issue is other harms are bein* done to achieve this. Already in the rUK people’s lives are being interfeared with in a way unthinkable two years ago. And currently based not on evidence, but projections. The governments of those parts of the UK may be right, and I don’t blame them for caution, but they must use these emergency powers with care, as they are most cost free to society.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
I agree - keeping the masks was probably sensible.
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
I already said - masks. Less effective in Scotland thanks to the majority of the population in GB not wearing masks and being told pandemic over, back to normal. Look at western Europe where masks remained and people were told to be careful around each other - minimal cases.
Germany and France have both recently been at record case levels
Indeed. As we are. Something that various posters were shrilly assuring us would not happen because we were so smart to let Delta rip and they were so stupid not to.
Omichron messed up the "flatten delta sombrero" strategy. Otherwise made sense.
Silver lining might be that those already infected have more protection or less likely to pass Omi on - I can't remember what the Imperial paper said regarding this though.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Who said it was Scotland specific? I said go look at Germany. Or a stack of other countries who all maintained a mask mandate and had very low infection levels.
No, but you did suggest that Scotland's exemplary gagging policy had been undone by invading hordes crossing from Carlisle to Dumfries. It's all a bit silly.
Besides which, forcing schoolchildren to cover their mouths with pieces of blue paper didn't do very much to stop the enormous back-to-school spike in cases in September, now did it?
Lets take Highland as the example of the power of tourism to spread Covid. During all the previous phases of the virus they had minimal cases. Then we hit summer 2021, tourists flocked in (from elsewhere in Scotland as well as England and every other country) and cases soared.
I agree that you can't completely stop it - thats why I am not and never have been making a zero Covid case. But we can dodge some of the infection vectors even if not all of them.
I assume you are referring to schools in England, not Scotland, where both restrictions and attitudes are very different. Scottish schools go back in early mid August, not September.
The September spike here was definitely a result of schools going back. Bit delayed obviously - exponential curves and all that.
And, just to be contrary, Highland was full of Hillwalkers from the Covid infested central belt (including me!).
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Who said it was Scotland specific? I said go look at Germany. Or a stack of other countries who all maintained a mask mandate and had very low infection levels.
No, but you did suggest that Scotland's exemplary gagging policy had been undone by invading hordes crossing from Carlisle to Dumfries. It's all a bit silly.
Besides which, forcing schoolchildren to cover their mouths with pieces of blue paper didn't do very much to stop the enormous back-to-school spike in cases in September, now did it?
Lets take Highland as the example of the power of tourism to spread Covid. During all the previous phases of the virus they had minimal cases. Then we hit summer 2021, tourists flocked in (from elsewhere in Scotland as well as England and every other country) and cases soared.
I agree that you can't completely stop it - thats why I am not and never have been making a zero Covid case. But we can dodge some of the infection vectors even if not all of them.
I assume you are referring to schools in England, not Scotland, where both restrictions and attitudes are very different. Scottish schools go back in early mid August, not September.
The clown knows nothing about Scotland obviously , just whining and bumping his gums. Plenty of that on here by idiots who know nothing outside the M25 apart from what they read from crackpots on the web
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Even the English can be right sometimes
For sure but not the whining little Englanders who only want to see Scotland as always being wrong. This one is well named and appears to have the brain of one as well.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
Yes, I was talking to a senior civil servant the other day who agreed that the 3-option trick was common, though dangerous when overplayed, since some politicians would pick the option they stuck in which they'd thought was too crazy to contemplate. She felt that as she'd specialised in the area for years it was reasonable to have a view on what was best, but you should be careful to make sure that all the options were reasonable possibilities to consider.
Since 2010 the government decided, in many policy areas, that they know best and civil servants are actually there to drive through or project manage their policies. This was a key area of Civil Service reform in the Cameron era. Consequently, for many policies, politicians are almost completely exposed to the problems that follow from their policies, the Civil Service cannot be blamed, they were just doing their job and delivering the policies.
Having no special knowledge, I would guess that the current situation is a result of politicians suddenly panicking about COVID and urgently wanting advice on the risks; and Civil Servants being unduly pessimistic in response. Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for avoidable deaths.
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
I had an old car whose piston went through the canshaft 20 years ago and it's been sitting in a garage ever since with the proprietor unable to get parts. Slowly it's condition deteriorated and I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to buy it as a project. I'd have been happy to accept £5-8,000. I looked online to see if anyone could sell a car that needed a load of work in the condition it was in. I found a place near Heathrow called Historics and they said they'd put it in their August auction.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
Presumably an E-Type Jag, rather than an Austin Montego?
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Even the English can be right sometimes
For sure but not the whining little Englanders who only want to see Scotland as always being wrong. This one is well named and appears to have the brain of one as well.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
I am somewhat concerned when we have decided that the scientists and the scientific modellers are faulty and Government Civil Servants are drawing the wrong conclusions from that faulty data.
Steve Baker and JRM on the other hand understanding the science and carefully balancing the Covid data against the economic negatives of Covid restrictions perfectly, appears counter- intuitive to me. I hope they have called it right.
I also find it somewhat concerning that the two front runners jockeying for Johnson's job have twigged that the more hawkish they are towards any Covid restrictions the more favour they curry within the Conservative Party.
I think the modellers have been used by the civil service, pace @NickPalmer’s comment. As a fellow scientist I am always wary of contact with the media in particular, and the general public to some extent. The ability for crossed wires to cause issues is always there. Some of the modelling seems nonsensical. It maybe that they are just testing how wide the envelope is. I suspect that there is some collusion though, with some modellers believing we need tough restrictions, and getting that message to the press ‘anonymously’. I can understand why people want to protect the nhs. After all, it’s the people that work in it and those treated by it that are being protected. But the issue is other harms are bein* done to achieve this. Already in the rUK people’s lives are being interfeared with in a way unthinkable two years ago. And currently based not on evidence, but projections. The governments of those parts of the UK may be right, and I don’t blame them for caution, but they must use these emergency powers with care, as they are most cost free to society.
I don't dispute any of what you say.
However Johnson has his hands tied because of "Partygate", Owen Paterson and a series of other indiscretions. Johnson can no longer make Prime Ministerial decisions based on his own interpretation of evidence or even modelling. He has to go with what the CRG says.
Now the CRG ( formerly the ERG) may be right, but one of their number is not Prime Minister yet. Personally, historical experience tells me the CRG/ERG is seldom right.
I think the question is not whether Boris Johnson will have as bad a 2022 as he had a 2021 - it would be hard to imagine what a worse year would look like - but whether assuming he doesn't have such a bad year whether he will get any credit.
I've heard it said it's a worse fate for a politician to be ridiculed than to be despised. Boris is now being ridiculed - openly and mercilessly. That's not a good place to be.
Holding a ticket for England to win the Third Test at 11/2 isn't a good place to be either this morning I fear.
As far as proper sport is concerned, the appreciable overnight rain has softened the ground at both Kempton and Leopardstown. In the King George, there's been some support for CHANTRY HOUSE and ASTERION FORLONGES but I'm sticking with Bryony and FRODON.
TRITONIC has been backed for the Christmas Hurdle against EPATANTE but I'm not sure the rain has done him any favours. As for the novice chase, 4/5, 6/5, 28s bar tells you all you need to know.
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
I had an old car whose piston went through the canshaft 20 years ago and it's been sitting in a garage ever since with the proprietor unable to get parts. Slowly it's condition deteriorated and I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to buy it as a project. I'd have been happy to accept £5-8,000. I looked online to see if anyone could sell a car that needed a load of work in the condition it was in. I found a place near Heathrow called Historics and they said they'd put it in their August auction.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
Presumably an E-Type Jag, rather than an Austin Montego?
I think the question is not whether Boris Johnson will have as bad a 2022 as he had a 2021 - it would be hard to imagine what a worse year would look like - but whether assuming he doesn't have such a bad year whether he will get any credit.
I've heard it said it's a worse fate for a politician to be ridiculed than to be despised. Boris is now being ridiculed - openly and mercilessly. That's not a good place to be.
Holding a ticket for England to win the Third Test at 11/2 isn't a good place to be either this morning I fear.
As far as proper sport is concerned, the appreciable overnight rain has softened the ground at both Kempton and Leopardstown. In the King George, there's been some support for CHANTRY HOUSE and ASTERION FORLONGES but I'm sticking with Bryony and FRODON.
TRITONIC has been backed for the Christmas Hurdle against EPATANTE but I'm not sure the rain has done him any favours. As for the novice chase, 4/5, 6/5, 28s bar tells you all you need to know.
I'm on Asterion at 7s.
Plus my usual trick - an 'in running' layback at evens.
FPT on PCP/Lease cars: I think this will be the way to buy cars for the foreseeable future. Bangernomics has about 10 more years left to run; then my suspicion is that cars will become so technologically complex that they cannot be economically fixed after about 7-10 years.
From what I can see leasing is better in most cases than PCP. You can lease a new Nissan Micra car for £150 per month; total cost, or an electric car for £225 per month. Presumably the lease company buy the cars from the manufacturer at a large discount, lease them for 3 years, then resell them on the used car market. Low interest rates help, but are not essential to make this model work.
The cash price of buying new cars has gone through the roof, over the past few years. My guess is that it is exploiting people who cling to traditional models of ownership.
The cost of leasing is set by sophisticated players taking bets on the price of used cars in the future. It may be they are wrong, but leasing rates are not carelessly set.
So if bangernomics goes, leasing won't work either?
The cost of manufacturing a car has to be recovered across its useful life. If that useful life becomes substantially shorter (and looking at new cars today, it's difficult to conclude that this isn't occurring) then the cost of ownership rises.
How this rise is distributed is an interesting question, but if leasing/pcp deals start to resemble 50% of useful life rather than 25% they are going to become spectacularly expensive as the residual at the end is rubbish.
Where the system may well collapse is if the shortening lifespans aren't priced in by the leasing suits who assume previous levels of residuals are achievable, but who then discover they've taken a one way bet on a lot of very expensive tat.
I'm a bit bemused by the type of person who runs new cars - my current banger cost me £2k five years ago, I've so far got 112k miles out of it. It is getting a bit tired now, but had I leased a Micra (a vastly inferior car) for £150 a month I would have had spent £9k to achieve the same result (and I bet the £150 a month doesn't give you 20-25k annual miles either).
I spent £20k on a nearly new car 17 years ago and it is still running fine
I had an old car whose piston went through the canshaft 20 years ago and it's been sitting in a garage ever since with the proprietor unable to get parts. Slowly it's condition deteriorated and I thought I'd see if anyone wanted to buy it as a project. I'd have been happy to accept £5-8,000. I looked online to see if anyone could sell a car that needed a load of work in the condition it was in. I found a place near Heathrow called Historics and they said they'd put it in their August auction.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
Presumably an E-Type Jag, rather than an Austin Montego?
Hachi Roku, if I remember correctly. Initial D tax.
E2A: It's a Bentley apparently. I don't know why I thought it was a Toyota!
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Morning Malc, hope those turnips are doing OK.
Morning ydoethur, plentiful indeed, a top of the morning to you hope you enjoyed your Turkey yesterday.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm deeply uneasy about JRM etc being seen as the primary advocates for keeping stuff open. I don't want that association at all.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Morning Malc, hope those turnips are doing OK.
Morning ydoethur, plentiful indeed, a top of the morning to you hope you enjoyed your Turkey yesterday.
Indeed, yes. It was perfectly roasted and well stuffed with pig meat.
The vaccine hesitant finally realising, that everyone’s going to get it at some point.
Yes, that and all the talk of continuing restrictions and passports and the rest.
In the early days some of the more intelligent refuseniks perhaps reasoned that they could freeload on herd immunity once most everyone else was vaccinated. This new variant that infects the vaccinated knocks that on the head.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
Dan Hodges is predicting that Liz Truss will be the next PM pretty soon, and I think he's right.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
Yes, I was talking to a senior civil servant the other day who agreed that the 3-option trick was common, though dangerous when overplayed, since some politicians would pick the option they stuck in which they'd thought was too crazy to contemplate. She felt that as she'd specialised in the area for years it was reasonable to have a view on what was best, but you should be careful to make sure that all the options were reasonable possibilities to consider.
Since 2010 the government decided, in many policy areas, that they know best and civil servants are actually there to drive through or project manage their policies. This was a key area of Civil Service reform in the Cameron era. Consequently, for many policies, politicians are almost completely exposed to the problems that follow from their policies, the Civil Service cannot be blamed, they were just doing their job and delivering the policies.
Having no special knowledge, I would guess that the current situation is a result of politicians suddenly panicking about COVID and urgently wanting advice on the risks; and Civil Servants being unduly pessimistic in response. Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for avoidable deaths.
I'm sure you're right - it's only the scale of the disaster that is protecting Ministers everywhere. If slow response to warnings resulted in 20 people dying in an accident, resignations would be inevitable. If it's 20,000...
The received wisdom in Parliament (up to 2010, perhaps it's changed) is that if a Minister arrived with a clear concept of what they wanted, the Civil Service would take pride in implementing it. In that sense, Yes Minister is misleading. But if the Minister turned up and said "What shall we do?" then the Civil Service would run the show. It was quite rare for a newly-appointed Minister to have clear ideas about a department they'd only just been appointed to, so the latter was more common, at least for the first year or two.
I see that the RI Xmas lectures this year are about the virus, with Van-Tam. As if kids haven’t had enough about it already!
The RI lectures are always worth watching, but I think I’ll give lectures on pandemics a miss. Didn’t they have someone who could talk enthusiastically about the James Webb Space Telescope?
I think the question is not whether Boris Johnson will have as bad a 2022 as he had a 2021 - it would be hard to imagine what a worse year would look like - but whether assuming he doesn't have such a bad year whether he will get any credit.
I've heard it said it's a worse fate for a politician to be ridiculed than to be despised. Boris is now being ridiculed - openly and mercilessly. That's not a good place to be.
Holding a ticket for England to win the Third Test at 11/2 isn't a good place to be either this morning I fear.
As far as proper sport is concerned, the appreciable overnight rain has softened the ground at both Kempton and Leopardstown. In the King George, there's been some support for CHANTRY HOUSE and ASTERION FORLONGES but I'm sticking with Bryony and FRODON.
TRITONIC has been backed for the Christmas Hurdle against EPATANTE but I'm not sure the rain has done him any favours. As for the novice chase, 4/5, 6/5, 28s bar tells you all you need to know.
Good Luck stodge, I stuck with Clan Des Obeaux despite the poor odds. I think Bravemansgame will win the Novices but again short odds and Nicholl's could well win with Danny Kirwan as well. Should be some good races at kempton, looking forward to seeing them.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Even the English can be right sometimes
For sure but not the whining little Englanders who only want to see Scotland as always being wrong. This one is well named and appears to have the brain of one as well.
Oh God, the thing's woken up.
I was on early posting , not like bird brains. Healthy living and up with the larks.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
It's a fictional TV show! You can obviously steer ministers on stuff they don't really care about, but locking down the country is one of those things politicians are going to pay attention to.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Morning Malc, hope those turnips are doing OK.
Morning ydoethur, plentiful indeed, a top of the morning to you hope you enjoyed your Turkey yesterday.
Indeed, yes. It was perfectly roasted and well stuffed with pig meat.
Well, I survived my run. On a six-mile circular run, I:
*) Crossed a Georgian river bridge. *) Passed the site of a Civil War battle. *) Crossed a medieval stone causeway. *) Ran along an old railway line. *) Crossed a cast-iron river bridge. *) Ran along a canal towpath. *) Passed an abandoned canal. *) Passed a Bronze Age round-barrow cemetery (the only surviving one in the Trent Valley).
Say what you like about England; there's a heck of a lot of history about.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
This is fair. But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Morning Malc, hope those turnips are doing OK.
Morning ydoethur, plentiful indeed, a top of the morning to you hope you enjoyed your Turkey yesterday.
Indeed, yes. It was perfectly roasted and well stuffed with pig meat.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
This is fair. But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
This assumes that getting rid of as many of the rules as possible wasn't beneficial in and of itself. Which, given that the ultimate aim is (or really ought) to be to dismantle as quickly as possible the Coronavirus Act, and the entire associated architecture of public health impositions, seems questionable.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
No “virus-related restrictions” in England? Are you absolutely sure about that?
Her Majesty’s Government strongly disagrees with you:
The restrictions in England are fewer than most of Western Europe right now - including Scotland and Wales. Thanks to the overblown predictions of doom from a couple of weeks ago, and the good work of Fraser Nelson in asking the right questions of the scientists (finally, a journalist doing a good job), there’s now little appetite among lawmakers for increasing restrictions in the near future.
It may work out well for Johnson. Let's hope so. Nonetheless, the inertia over Covid restrictions is due to him having been taken hostage by the CRG, and not his anti-lockdown genius.
And Fraser Nelson "asking the right questions of scientists"? If you say so.
I think he stirred a hornets nest. I don’t believe it wa# necessarily the modellers. I think the issue is the civil service who have been trying to steer us to more restrictions to protect the nhs. The civil service has traditionally ‘always known best’ and I think they have selected the ‘right’ data to brief cabinet with. They’ve been rumbled to some extent, and this has probably made it less likely that there will be more restrictions in England, unless hospitalisation really shoot up.
Mate, come off it. It's the politicians who make the decisions!
Maybe, and maybe I’m influenced too much by memories of Jim Hacker, but I have civil sevants operate in this way before. They do not respect politicians as they do not have the expertise to ‘understand’ and thus can be steered. Hence three scenarios, one outrageously awful (to be discounted), one likely too optimistic, and one in the middle they want chosen.
It's a fictional TV show! You can obviously steer ministers on stuff they don't really care about, but locking down the country is one of those things politicians are going to pay attention to.
As I said above, restrictions are the safest course for politicians, before you get to the advisers. Especially given the number of oldies.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. The laughably described "exit wave" just gave us 30-40k cases a day that other countries avoided, piling pressure on the NHS so that when the winter spike came we were in a worse position than we could have been. As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant we piled cases on for little benefit. We're still getting the mega spike. We're still reliant on boosters because "fully vaccinated" doesn't stop it.
"As Omicron doesn't care much that you have been double vaccinated or had a previous variant"
Do you have a source for this claim? I don't think the vaccines have no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation.
As I haven't said that they have "no effect in terms of reducing your risk of hospitalisation" I don't need to provide you with a source for your claim.
Omicron is infecting people who have had other variants, Omicron is infecting people who are double vaccinated. That is the new development which has been the driving force behind the fantastic NHS effort to get as many people boosted as quickly as possible.
You implied it. What else does "doesn't care much" mean?
Laughable - and you and a couple of the other pray the pox away loons have repeatedly tried to claim I said the same thing.
"Doesn't care much" for the vaccine or past infection means what it says. You don't get the same protection from being "fully vaccinated" or from having already had Covid as you did from previous variants.
I suppose the question is what would you have done instead - more restrictions over the past 6 months? I'll get my laptop out later and see whether admissions in Scotland have been significantly lower since the summer given our mask policy etc, though there are plenty confounding factors.
I think the thing we can all agree on is that the booster programme was 8 weeks late for mitigating the effects of a winter peak in admissions - whether that was delta, flu or a new variant.
I've been clear that I would not have lifted the mask requirements. Scotland probably a less clear example (with lots of cross-travel from maskless England) vs somewhere like Germany where its masks everywhere.
Ah! So Scotland's policies were bang on, it was just England's fault that they yielded no measurable benefit? Your SNP membership card is in the post.
Saddo, Little Englander whiner
Even the English can be right sometimes
For sure but not the whining little Englanders who only want to see Scotland as always being wrong. This one is well named and appears to have the brain of one as well.
Oh God, the thing's woken up.
I was on early posting , not like bird brains. Healthy living and up with the larks.
Morning Malky. Just back from the morning walk and having coffee. We seem to have missed the snow here - pleasant if grey morning, ie not raining heavily, or indeed at all.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
And ridden down the road not on the bloody pavement.
First up, I did an LFT and it came out negative, so I can go for a walk later - unlike Wor Lass. She's just about to head out for her PCR test. Her last taste of freedom for a week.
Secondly, she has fixed the CD player, following my 'insert two discs at the same time' episode. A bent piece of paper poked into the slot did the trick, and out they popped, one after the other.
A bit embarrassing, since I'm meant to be the practical engineer and she is the science wonk.
We focus initially on simulations were the severity of Omicron is half that of Delta. In the absence of additional controls, with England remaining under Plan B, we project a large wave of infection, leading to hospital admissions peaking at 13,600 per day (9,300-21,3000) [three times Delta peak into a hospital system with less spare capacity than Winter 2021] and deaths peaking at 2890 per day (1800-4770) [twice Delta peak].
The timing of interventions is critical because of an assumed rebound in cases when restrictions are removed. If you go too early you push the cases to a larger second peak; if you go too late, everything comes in the first peak and the intervention is wasted. The aim with any innervation is to flatten the wave to two large peaks stretching across three months instead of one massive peak lasting a month. The actual restrictions last two weeks. See figure 8.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
No, this is lazy.
This is a mode of transport that doesn't pollute our streets, is compatible with renewable energy, takes up no space on our streets (parking), and is accessible to those who can't cycle or walk long distances.
As a city cyclist, I hate them with a passion because of the behaviour of the people who uses them. That doesn't have to be the case.
Gosh the public are poor pundits. They're worse than Dan Hodges. They have every single thing wrongly evaluated. Next year will not see Johnson replaced nor Starmer replaced nor a GE. There will be no national lockdown, no new vaccine-immune variant, and there WILL be an end to Covid restrictions. Get a grip public.
The whole end of restrictions thing is predicated rather heavily on our leaders not treating every variant of concern as, essentially, the start of a new pandemic, rather than a minor development in the existing one.
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I see a different pattern with the pandemic here. I see the real one not the one you're imagining. We have never done a lockdown without a clear compelling reason and our tendency has been to act too late not too early. We saw that with the 1st one. We saw it again with the last one a year ago. What we also saw with the last one was the government - apart from a short delay on the final step - unlocking bang on the timetable they set out. There was no attempt to hang onto the restrictions for longer than necessary. Why? Because they have absolutely no reason to do so.
Exactly the same now. The politics steers away from restrictions and 'living with covid' unless there's a clear and compelling reason otherwise. And the reason would need to be even more clear and compelling - compared to previous waves - because the politics of restrictions has grown more difficult and public support for them has waned. So, this time, we move further along the spectrum. Rather than locking down too late we will not be locking down at all. Next time - barring the virus mutating into something wholly unexpected - a lockdown won't even be contemplated.
This is the rational take and I commend it to the House.
Only a few weeks after De Klerk died and with Nelson Mandela also no longer with us the key architects of the end of apartheid in South Africa have all now passed on
Yeah, we looked at that. Has no-one at BMW heard of aerodynamics?
It has a Cd of 0.25 making it the most aerodynamically efficient SUV ever built. What more do you want? Engineers don't design cars by just standing around looking at them...
Everyone hated the 'big grill' G80 M3/M4 when it first came out but they look really good in the metal/plastic and now the 'small grill' F80 M3/M4 looks dated.
Well, I survived my run. On a six-mile circular run, I:
*) Crossed a Georgian river bridge. *) Passed the site of a Civil War battle. *) Crossed a medieval stone causeway. *) Ran along an old railway line. *) Crossed a cast-iron river bridge. *) Ran along a canal towpath. *) Passed an abandoned canal. *) Passed a Bronze Age round-barrow cemetery (the only surviving one in the Trent Valley).
Say what you like about England; there's a heck of a lot of history about.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
They will still wait for the boundary review process to finish.
Unless the polls have thrown the pros and cons up in the air again
Good morning all. We need to talk about champagne.
On the discussion on vehicles, the government needs to come up with a legislative framework for electric scooters. Pronto.
Maybe they should be banned.
Or subjected to the same legislation as motorbikes. Riders must be 16, wearing a helmet and have passed a test. Vehicles must be registered, insured and taxed.
There also seems to be a grey area between electric bikes and electric motorbikes. I saw somebody on one the other week and he was bloody shifting.
Boris knew exactly what he wanted to do as PM, get Brexit done, which he achieved in early 2020. Unlike Brown he also won a landslide majority in the process.
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
They will still wait for the boundary review process to finish.
Unless the polls have thrown the pros and cons up in the air again
Good morning all. We need to talk about champagne.
Yes, the election won’t be before the boundary review, and if the government stays unpopular they’ll change leader beforehand.
On topic, I actually think the next couple of months will go well for the government. With the success of the vaccine booster programme, it looks like England might be one of very few places in Western Europe to avoid virus-related restrictions in the new year.
Your judgement on almost everything is so suspect that I take heart from this latest wild prediction. You favour restrictions at any cost and by that criteria of course you may be correct. But for 99% of the population who don't subscribe to the bone-headed beliefs of the far tory right, we'd really rather like the NHS to remain able to function and for avoidable deaths to be, err, avoided.
I first encountered the powers of your soothsaying when you confidently informed us that there was no chance whatsoever of Emma Raducanu being Sports Personality of the Year.
But I do find it amusing that some tories are still clinging on to flotsam, like shipwreck survivors who can't quite believe that the good ship Boris has sunk.
Merry Christmas to you too!
The UK is at the front of the booster queue, but the continent is catching up pretty quickly.
Their problem, IMHO, comes out of an addiction to "zero Covid". This means they are more willing to accept restrictions.
It also means they didn't get a whole bunch of (mostly) harmless "exit wave cases" in the summer.
Plus, of course, it turns out that AZ-AZ-Pfizer is highly efficacious.
All that being said, most of the continent will have boosted more than half all adults by mid-January, which is going to be second only to the UK.
Given that Omicron outcompetes delta and is much more likely to reinfect people, wasn't the exit wave just extra cases?
Yes. If we'd known in the summer that the next variant would be less virulent, then you would have been able to reduce medical harm by delaying Delta cases into the winter so that they were Omicron cases. But no way of knowing whether the next variant would be more or less virulent, so taking Delta cases in the summer/autumn was still the best choice available at the time.
This is fair. But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
Yes, on a medical-only basis it's been a net loss, rather than the gain intended. But then there's also been the advantage of not having extraordinary restrictions on social gathering or normal business.
Even if you'd known in advance about Omicron you can make a strong case for opening up and taking those Delta cases for that reason.
Comments
Sure - Omicron is not the health threat that Delta was. And yet we had 30-40k cases per day for months of Delta which was not the milder disease you speak of. And the people who had Delta are at risk of catching Omicron hence the need to get a booster jab in their arms very quiickly.
Glad I bought mine last year. My calcs made buying with cash the only sensible option.
Boosting is likely to do several things. One, it may help us restrict the size of this wave (probably already is, as the cases are hugely skewed to the young so far, and they are less likely to be vaccinated and/or boosted). Secondly it will allow more frail individuals to encounter omicron in a better position to fight it off. This is key, as it can clearly still kill people. I’d argue it’s also concentrated minds a bit of the unvacccintaed, who are now coming forward.
So Omicron - unlike Delta - doesn't care much that you have been fully vaccinated or recovered. It wants you anyway and it has the ability to do so.
Our salvation is that three doses reinstates the protections we need. For a while. Then we will seemingly need a 4th jab. Which is fine - if we need to get a booster every number of months to stay largely protected then we do so and Covid ceases to be the mega threat that it is.
I think things get better for the government from here on. The last few weeks have been something of a perfect storm. However, the overall impact has been to permanently lower the ceiling - I don’t see the Tories getting above 38 at best now.
However, the fortunately of the government are no longer the fortunates of Boris. He’s got no way back in the public eye. And in any event, why would the Cabinet give him back his power? He’s trussed like a turkey - which ambitious underling is going to do a deal with him confident that he can deliver. They will all be positioning themselves close to his likely successors. He will be executed at a time to be determined, but until then he is “in office but not in power”
But Scotland has followed a similar pattern to RUK with number of cases in the last half of 2021 (particularly the big spike in September when schools went back).
So, the question remains - what restrictions would you have brought in?
https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/17136680/omicron-gone-south-africa-within-weeks-hope-uk/
Tim Minchin:
"I'd rather break bread with Dawkins
than Desmond Tutu to be honest."
Zero-covid mentality is much more prevalent up here, based on a simple BBC Scotland to BBC 5 Live comparison
She previously had a Citroen C3 Pluriel, which was basically indestructible and still going strong at 130,000 miles. Motoring journalists love to include the Pluriel in their “10 Worst Cars Ever” lists, which tells you how much they know.
Frankly I’d be happy if every single car on the planet were crushed into a small metal cube and launched into orbit but there you go.
It's schools (see the September spike). That's it. It's unavoidable, unless you close them.
With Omicron less virulent, and two vaccine doses providing good protection against hospitalisation and death, it just isn't that deadly that we should care enough to impose extraordinary restrictions on our daily lives.
Besides which, forcing schoolchildren to cover their mouths with pieces of blue paper didn't do very much to stop the enormous back-to-school spike in cases in September, now did it?
Steve Baker and JRM on the other hand understanding the science and carefully balancing the Covid data against the economic negatives of Covid restrictions perfectly, appears counter- intuitive to me. I hope they have called it right.
I also find it somewhat concerning that the two front runners jockeying for Johnson's job have twigged that the more hawkish they are towards any Covid restrictions the more favour they curry within the Conservative Party.
I got it taken to the site by truck and that was that. They advised me not to put a reserve on it as people were keen on cars that looked like they'd been found in a barn. The big day came and it went under the hammer for £35,000! I was gobsmacked. The moral is don't throw anything away!
I agree that you can't completely stop it - thats why I am not and never have been making a zero Covid case. But we can dodge some of the infection vectors even if not all of them.
I assume you are referring to schools in England, not Scotland, where both restrictions and attitudes are very different. Scottish schools go back in early mid August, not September.
I can understand why people want to protect the nhs. After all, it’s the people that work in it and those treated by it that are being protected. But the issue is other harms are bein* done to achieve this. Already in the rUK people’s lives are being interfeared with in a way unthinkable two years ago. And currently based not on evidence, but projections. The governments of those parts of the UK may be right, and I don’t blame them for caution, but they must use these emergency powers with care, as they are most cost free to society.
Silver lining might be that those already infected have more protection or less likely to pass Omi on - I can't remember what the Imperial paper said regarding this though.
And, just to be contrary, Highland was full of Hillwalkers from the Covid infested central belt (including me!).
Having no special knowledge, I would guess that the current situation is a result of politicians suddenly panicking
about COVID and urgently wanting advice on the risks; and Civil Servants being unduly pessimistic in response. Everyone is trying to avoid being blamed for avoidable deaths.
3rd one down....
https://www.historics.co.uk/buying/auctions/2021-07-17/cars/?Make=&q=Bentley
However Johnson has his hands tied because of "Partygate", Owen Paterson and a series of other indiscretions. Johnson can no longer make Prime Ministerial decisions based on his own interpretation of evidence or even modelling. He has to go with what the CRG says.
Now the CRG ( formerly the ERG) may be right, but one of their number is not Prime Minister yet. Personally, historical experience tells me the CRG/ERG is seldom right.
I think the question is not whether Boris Johnson will have as bad a 2022 as he had a 2021 - it would be hard to imagine what a worse year would look like - but whether assuming he doesn't have such a bad year whether he will get any credit.
I've heard it said it's a worse fate for a politician to be ridiculed than to be despised. Boris is now being ridiculed - openly and mercilessly. That's not a good place to be.
Holding a ticket for England to win the Third Test at 11/2 isn't a good place to be either this morning I fear.
As far as proper sport is concerned, the appreciable overnight rain has softened the ground at both Kempton and Leopardstown. In the King George, there's been some support for CHANTRY HOUSE and ASTERION FORLONGES but I'm sticking with Bryony and FRODON.
TRITONIC has been backed for the Christmas Hurdle against EPATANTE but I'm not sure the rain has done him any favours. As for the novice chase, 4/5, 6/5, 28s bar tells you all you need to know.
Plus my usual trick - an 'in running' layback at evens.
"First and second Covid jabs surge in England"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59791656
E2A: It's a Bentley apparently. I don't know why I thought it was a Toyota!
The response to Omicron has followed the pattern (1) we're not sure what's happening, (2) look at all these terrifying predictions, (3) restrictions (just in case,) (4) emergency booster jab campaign, (5) omigod it's reached the hospitals, (6) if you don't support LOCKDOWN NOW you want everyone over 50 to die horribly within the next six weeks. And for Our Beloved NHS to burn.
Lockdown (or, at the very least, Step 2 of the roadmap, which isn't far short of it) is only being prevented in England by Boris Johnson's weak political position, and only being prevented in the rest of the UK by the lack of willingness of Rishi Sunak to provide financial support for mass scale business closures. We really shouldn't be having to rely on internal Tory Party politics to save the country from an endless diet of restrictions, but that looks very much like where we are right now.
I'm much more comfortable in the Sunak camp of "other harms". I hope that prevails in the media narrative over the next few weeks.
Like that one in Downing Street...
In the early days some of the more intelligent refuseniks perhaps reasoned that they could freeload on herd immunity once most everyone else was vaccinated. This new variant that infects the vaccinated knocks that on the head.
The received wisdom in Parliament (up to 2010, perhaps it's changed) is that if a Minister arrived with a clear concept of what they wanted, the Civil Service would take pride in implementing it. In that sense, Yes Minister is misleading. But if the Minister turned up and said "What shall we do?" then the Civil Service would run the show. It was quite rare for a newly-appointed Minister to have clear ideas about a department they'd only just been appointed to, so the latter was more common, at least for the first year or two.
So I went looking for good news stories:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/12/25/lasers-used-10bn-james-webb-telescope-launch-can-now-help-eye/
Laser technology developed for JWSC is now being adapted for eye surgery
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10344961/Comedians-serve-hot-meals-jokes-Laugh-Factorys-free-Christmas-dinner-LA.html
Los Angeles comedy club Laugh Factory put on a free gig yesterday, including Christmas Dinner, for the homeless.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-10344543/The-heartwarming-smile-husband-Derek-Kate-Garraway-feared-never-witness-again.html
Derek Draper seen out yesterday for the first time, after 21 months of an horrendous Covid ordeal. His was the UK’s longest hospitalisation with the disease.
You can obviously steer ministers on stuff they don't really care about, but locking down the country is one of those things politicians are going to pay attention to.
*) Crossed a Georgian river bridge.
*) Passed the site of a Civil War battle.
*) Crossed a medieval stone causeway.
*) Ran along an old railway line.
*) Crossed a cast-iron river bridge.
*) Ran along a canal towpath.
*) Passed an abandoned canal.
*) Passed a Bronze Age round-barrow cemetery (the only surviving one in the Trent Valley).
Say what you like about England; there's a heck of a lot of history about.
But let's be honest about the fact that this hasn't worked out, despite being a reasonable decision.
First up, I did an LFT and it came out negative, so I can go for a walk later - unlike Wor Lass. She's just about to head out for her PCR test. Her last taste of freedom for a week.
Secondly, she has fixed the CD player, following my 'insert two discs at the same time' episode. A bent piece of paper poked into the slot did the trick, and out they popped, one after the other.
A bit embarrassing, since I'm meant to be the practical engineer and she is the science wonk.
We focus initially on simulations were the severity of Omicron is half that of Delta. In the absence of additional controls, with England remaining under Plan B, we project a large wave of infection, leading to hospital admissions peaking at 13,600 per day (9,300-21,3000) [three times Delta peak into a hospital system with less spare capacity than Winter 2021] and deaths peaking at 2890 per day (1800-4770) [twice Delta peak].
The timing of interventions is critical because of an assumed rebound in cases when restrictions are removed. If you go too early you push the cases to a larger second peak; if you go too late, everything comes in the first peak and the intervention is wasted. The aim with any innervation is to flatten the wave to two large peaks stretching across three months instead of one massive peak lasting a month. The actual restrictions last two weeks. See figure 8.
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/zeeman_institute/new_research/combatting_disease/covid19/Projections
There is of course zero chance of a general election before the government's 5 year term is up unless the Tories have a big poll lead which they clearly do not at present. So forget a 2022 general election or likely a general election before 2024
This is a mode of transport that doesn't pollute our streets, is compatible with renewable energy, takes up no space on our streets (parking), and is accessible to those who can't cycle or walk long distances.
As a city cyclist, I hate them with a passion because of the behaviour of the people who uses them. That doesn't have to be the case.
Exactly the same now. The politics steers away from restrictions and 'living with covid' unless there's a clear and compelling reason otherwise. And the reason would need to be even more clear and compelling - compared to previous waves - because the politics of restrictions has grown more difficult and public support for them has waned. So, this time, we move further along the spectrum. Rather than locking down too late we will not be locking down at all. Next time - barring the virus mutating into something wholly unexpected - a lockdown won't even be contemplated.
This is the rational take and I commend it to the House.
Only a few weeks after De Klerk died and with Nelson Mandela also no longer with us the key architects of the end of apartheid in South Africa have all now passed on
Unless the polls have thrown the pros and cons up in the air again
Good morning all. We need to talk about champagne.
You don’t have any Champagne left?
Wife and I are back on the mulled wine already
Even if you'd known in advance about Omicron you can make a strong case for opening up and taking those Delta cases for that reason.