It is astonishing to see somebody accusing Europe of mismanaging the pandemic and yet giving Johnson a 10/10 for it here.
Let's check how many people died buddy
There's much, much more to the pandemic than how many people "died" and Johnson definitely doesn't deserve a 10/10, he's been far too lockdown heavy and lifted lockdown restrictions too late in the summer.
Being better than others, doesn't mean you're perfect by any means.
Johnson isn't better than others. At best we are middling. The idea we are the best, or better than anyone else is absurd and you look ridiculous for such a POV
First in the world for vaccines being rolled out. First in the world of major nations for vaccines being rolled out. One of the only developed nations to lift all restrictions in the summer.
How the fuck is first "middling"? Don't be ridiculous, there is nothing "middling" about first. 🙄
We are decidedly middling, at best, in respect of the death rate from Covid, however one chooses to measure it. Arguably, for an advanced country such as ours the death rate is disappointing. For many, this is a more important metric than those you cite. Of course, the death rate is provisional - as is all the other data.
I have no idea why anyone would prioritise the death rate from Covid as a more important metric than the speed of rolling out vaccines.
Deaths are natural, vaccines are human. The latter is far more consequential.
Well that's your POV and that's how you differ from some of us. I think it's a moral disgrace how many people have died unnecessarily during COVID, much of that due to our inaction here in this country. NZ have done a much better job at preventing death, as have many others.
You don't prioritise that as a mark of success but I do.
You have your priorities, I have mine.
In hindsight I think we'd have been better doing the Swedish model and having no restrictions even pre-vaccines. I accepted lockdown as a necessary evil pre-vaccines and in hindsight I think I was wrong to do so.
NZ have had people unable to travel for years. There will be plenty who've died in NZ from natural causes having been cut off from their family for their final two years of their lives.
Are their deaths less "worthy" than Covid deaths to be counted?
If you can provide evidence more people have died in NZ due to lack of travel than have been prevented by this policy, I would like to see it. I don't know what a good number would be - but many thousands would have needed to die for the policy not to be worth it.
I think the Swedish model was a disaster, with even the architect of it saying it was wrong.
I didn't say that more people died due to lack of travel, I said more people lost their final years of lives due to the restrictions. The two points are very different.
About 35k people die naturally in NZ annually anyway. So about 70k have died in 2 years having lost their final years cut off from family and loved ones. Those 70k who've died naturally aren't going to be brought back to life to see their loved ones again when the restrictions are lifted.
Yet if you check the "death" charts shared by Covid obsessives then 50 people have died in New Zealand apparently.
50 really? What happened to the other approximately 69,950 that have either been buried or cremated?
In what way have people in NZ been "cut off"? Most of the time life has gone on there as normal. They've had a much shorter lockdown period than us.
NZ has done extremely well overall, but arguments about it are ultimately pointless given its unusual situation. It's in the middle of a vast ocean, 1,500 miles from anywhere, and all goods and people that come into and out of the country transit by sea and air. Sealing itself off behind travel bans and quarantine hotels was very painful (ask all the Kiwis exiled overseas about that) but it was also achievable practically. Britain, still less France or Austria or any number of other countries, didn't have that extreme option available.
I understand that. We couldn't have been NZ even if we'd wanted too. But the way BR was talking they've been imprisoned unable to see dying relatives for two years continuously. They haven't. They've had much longer periods of total internal freedom than we have.
We should have closed our international borders immediately in the same way that NZ and Australia did. We were in the ridiculous situation of locking down the domestic population while flights from China, Italy and elsewhere were still arriving in the country every day.
Best in the world! We were number one in taking back control of our borders!
Omichron laid this argument to rest. We had immediate data from S.Africa, responded by banning travel from multiple countries, and we then discovered Omi had already been in the community for several days.
One of the best things about this country is how well travelled we all are, and how many guests we have from overseas. It's also a weakness in a pandemic.
Omicron is indeed a different scenario. I was referring to the first wave where we literally did nothing to stop virus pouring in. Despite literally weeks later the people doing nothing having been crowing about how they had just Taken Back Control of the border. Remember that EU membership meant borders could not be closed (yet they were) and having left ours could now be closed (yet wasn't).
This is what is so laughable about Doctor Death's 10/10 ramping. Well, pitiful more than laughable. If your perspective is that the only consideration is his personal freedom and people die so what, then perhaps 10/10.
Its like Harold Shipman giving himself 10/10 for the speed in which he dispatched his patients. Anyway, we know that it was only the law preventing all the other doctors from murdering their own patients...
I'm sure it was already spreading through the UK in January 2020, and any restrictions would have only slowed it down by a couple of days.
As others have pointed out, too much of our freight is RORO to have put effective travel bans in place anyway.
Time for this morning's "get your vaccine" bulletin.
News from Poland: three-quarters of Covid dead unvaccinated; most of vaccinated victims elderly and already sick:
Poland is reporting 794 Covid-related deaths on Wednesday, the highest daily number in the fourth wave of pandemic.
Deputy minister of health Waldemar Kraska made the announcement on broadcaster Polsat News on Wednesday morning, adding that 600 people were not vaccinated at the time of their deaths.
Kraska told the outlet:
They could go on living if they had the vaccine. The average age of the remaining deceased is over 75; They were burdened with many diseases: obesity, hypertension, heart diseases or cancer.”
The country also reported another 15,571 new daily coronavirus cases.
Poland has been dealing with persistently high daily case numbers in a fourth wave that has forced authorities to tighten restrictions.
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
It’s going to be a big mess from next week. I doubt it will cut through to the headlines much because the story will probably not be traffic jams or shortages in supermarkets, but rather thousands of little frustrations, holdups and cost increases that will fall on small and mid sized importers.
The way I see see the various Brexit changes since last January is a series of bureaucratic micro-aggressions against business. They all add up. It’s so utterly pointless. But good news for customs advisers.
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
If Omicron is a respiratory disease that does not affect the lungs the there really is no reason to worry too much about it.
The SA data is backing that up, the number of hospitalisations is tiny compared to Delta and in Guateng the number in hospital is now falling very quickly.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
I'd need a lot of convincing to consent to the vaccination of my young son. The vaccinations don't stop transmission, only serious illness; I need hard evidence that vaccines prevent life threatening illness in kids given that we know that the vaccines themselves are not without risks, such as the AZ blood clotting issues which caused a significant number of deaths and everyone now seems to have been forgotten about. I wouldn't like to be the person that administered a vaccine that killed a 5 year old. Such an event, which could well happen, will destroy all confidence in vaccination and government messaging about vaccination. It would probably bring down the government.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
Keeping quiet on the pretext of holidays if he has any sense. On past form it is highly likely he wants restrictions, but saying so wouldn't be popular
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
Presumably waiting for some polling, or to see which way the headlines go.
A quick scan suggests lots of stories about Scots and Welsh heading for Berwick, Newcastle, Carlisle, Bristol, Blackpool and Liverpool to see in 2022 - and lots of unhappy pub owners in the devolved administrations.
Bartholomew Roberts who presumably is Phillip Thompson is simply wrong to state that we are first (see my links below). We were quick on initial vaccines although Israel soon acted faster.
We were very slow about boosters because Johnson did his usual dithering.
We have been atrociously slow on child vaccinations.
The UK's case rate and death rate has been pretty bad.
And we're playing a risky game with cases at the moment simply because Johnson is too weak to stand up to the far right of his party.
He will continue to pump the line (aka lie) that we're world beating but most people saw through his tricks some time ago.
Doxxing is not cool and also, a pedant writes that "links below" is unhelpful because it depends which way the reader has sorted the posts, which, for added fun, is different by default on the Vanilla and pb interfaces. And while Boris might be running scared of his own shadow, is there any evidence it was the right who stopped the ditherer-in-chief?
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
As he is anonymous at present we can only assume labour's silence is because he needs to see who is right first
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Mr Hindsight
You’re back on the Johnson train again then? Your latest “doubt” lasted a whole day
Off-topic, its already increasingly clear how difficult it is going to be to get "groupage" loads across the GB / EU border from Saturday. The GB new customs computer isn't ready so have to rely on the old system which they said from the start was utterly incapable of such a thing. We haven't built the Border Control Posts, or staffed them, and the few we have built in Kent are utterly inadequate.
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
Problem is we have to quietly drop it because as you say if dropping it was found out the WTO would be calling - or China will start exporting any old shite to us because we can hardly complain.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Mr Hindsight
You’re back on the Johnson train again then? Your latest “doubt” lasted a whole day
Would "prefer" the Goldman Sachs Elf over Johnson but would still vote for Johnson over Starmer I believe is the nuanced position upon which we've landed.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
Without the SA data Im pretty sure that we would be in lockdown now.
Whitty & Co were heavily pushing for one and were even trying to dismiss the SA data as not relevant.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
It was a turning point but whether Nelson or the Tory CRG understand what is being modelled is another question, though perhaps moot.
As I understand it and as we are seeing now vaccines don't appear to be stopping people getting or passing on the virus.
They do prevent serious illness, which children are overwhelmingly unlikely to experience with the virus.
So what is the net benefit of vaccinating children.
Overwhelmingly unlikely is not the same as don’t. It’s an equation of whether the population risk from the vaccine is greater or lesser than the virus. One reason I think they should, is because not every child has immunity from exposure. And who’s to say another variant doesn’t pop along that causes more serious problems for children.
The problem is that you have that marginal theoretical gain and need to offset that against (a) a known rate of site specific and other side effects; and (b) long term unknown impact on the autoimmune system from MRNA based vaccines
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
You are right, given the typical symptom set for omicron so far in this country, we should track sales of lozenges instead.
This feels eerily similar to what was said initially about the Wuhan variant. I just hope you are right and I am wrong
Someone pointed out elsewhere yesterday that for most people Polio was a mild disease, few days of diarrhoea and that was it.
The problem wasn't with the 99.5% of people who caught Polio but the 0.5% who caught "Long" Polio. And we don't know what long or even medium term Omicron looks like.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Mr Hindsight
You’re back on the Johnson train again then? Your latest “doubt” lasted a whole day
I am a conservative who seeks the end of his premiership
I am also someone who backs HMG and utterly rejects Drakeford's Corbyn style tribute act which sees pubs and clubs in Wrexham watching in despair as their business evaporates by the bus full to nearby Chester
We also learn overnight Drakeford has banned the words 'Brexit' and Her Majesty's Government ( HMG) adding to criminalising of going into the office as well as park runs
You claim to be a Starmer fanbois but at the same time praise the Corbyn style Drakeford.
As I understand it and as we are seeing now vaccines don't appear to be stopping people getting or passing on the virus.
They do prevent serious illness, which children are overwhelmingly unlikely to experience with the virus.
So what is the net benefit of vaccinating children.
Overwhelmingly unlikely is not the same as don’t. It’s an equation of whether the population risk from the vaccine is greater or lesser than the virus. One reason I think they should, is because not every child has immunity from exposure. And who’s to say another variant doesn’t pop along that causes more serious problems for children.
So "just in case". Seems a bold move to vaccinate people who are overwhelmingly unlikely to be seriously ill from the virus for this reason.
Many places have long ago decided the balance of risk lies with vaccination, without considering my just in case.
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
Foxy pointed out last night that other serious symptoms can occur independently of lung issues.
Countries that have been pursuing a zero covid policy are going to encounter problems when the omicron variant arrives, assuming they continue to insist on a zero covid policy.
There’s been the odd post about China in the last week but not much. Does no one else think that’s going to be the major story of early 2022?
The industrial disinfecting of city streets and air in Xian was so odd. We all know fresh air and surfaces are no risk, so why are they doing it? Bart said it was a good way of keeping people indoors. And that would be true in a country with a population that regularly laughs off what their government tell them to do. But a bit redundant in a city that already has tanks on the streets.
Feels to me like the Party knows it has now probably lost control and they needed a highly visual meme for social media so that a) people in the rest of the country would become afraid again, b) no one could question they had not done everything possible.
Which leaves us with two questions of note. 1) by how much is omicron intrinsically less virulent than other strains? 2) what protection against serious disease from omicron do their Mickey Mouse vaccines confer?
China might be lucky and chart a safe passage through omicron’s choppy waters. But if it’s unlucky, we’re going to see a lengthy national lockdown (in the extreme sense of the word), and potentially scenes not dissimilar to Wuhan in multiple places at once.
While the leadership deserve everything coming to them, the poor fuckers that live under them do not. So a troubling month ahead while we see which way it goes. Not least for what it might do to global markets, demand and inflation if it leads to the day of reckoning in their financial system.
My understanding is that the current outbreak in Xian is Delta, so I expect them to be able to bring that under some measure of control, as they've just about managed to do with Delta outbreaks elsewhere.
I do think that when Omicron reaches China it is going to cause big issues, most directly for us in disrupting industrial production, which will compound our inflation problems, and probably create some severe shortages for a variety of goods.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Mr Hindsight
You’re back on the Johnson train again then? Your latest “doubt” lasted a whole day
Come on horse, it’s possible to criticise two party leaders at the same time... For what’s it’s worth Johnson needs to be gone ASAP for the country’s sake, but for Labour you probably want him still in No 10. Starmer has always sided on the cautious side through the pandemic. It’s politically easy to do as there is no cost (to him) in calling for more restrictions, especially with a terrified nation who quite likes restrictions (especially on other people). Some of the things he has called for have been wrong, in my view. Circuit-breakers are useless, as shown in Wales. If you need to get cases down you need to go the whole hog. Other issues I’d say he is right. It’s too easy for well off people to wfh and isolate etc, without appreciating that many of the less well off can’t easily do the same. If we are claiming measures are being taken for the common good then not helping everyone isolate who needs too is crazy. We do not have a ‘winner’ yet over omicron. It could still turn very messy in England, and the more cautious parts of the U.K. may end with a better result. Or omicron could be a paper tiger and the English approach will have worked. We don’t know yet, but will do soon(ish). I note that labour has shifted its approach now.
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
It impacts lungs much less, but not not at all. It may be able to prod your immune system into a cytokine storm. And if people are old/fcked up enough they can even die of the common cold
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Mr Hindsight
You’re back on the Johnson train again then? Your latest “doubt” lasted a whole day
I am a conservative who seeks the end of his premiership
I am also someone who backs HMG and utterly rejects Drakeford's Corbyn style tribute act which sees pubs and clubs in Wrexham watching in despair as their business evaporates by the bus full to nearby Chester
We also learn overnight Drakeford has banned the words 'Brexit' and Her Majesty's Government ( HMG) adding to criminalising of going into the office as well as park runs
You claim to be a Starmer fanbois but at the same time praise the Corbyn style Drakeford.
You cannot have it both ways
Have you given up on the ‘Drakefool’ thing? Shame, it was hilarious.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
It was a turning point but whether Nelson or the Tory CRG understand what is being modelled is another question, though perhaps moot.
I’m still not entirely sure what was going on. I’d suggest that a decent range of modelling was being done, but selected models were getting to cabinet, and those didn’t include the actual best case scenarios. I don’t know why or who, but I suspect the civil service of trying to steer things...
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
Foxy pointed out last night that other serious symptoms can occur independently of lung issues.
I believe there can be other proximate causes of death (@Foxy ‘s point) - my father ultimately died of renal failure / multiple organ failure - but the data I’ve seen suggest these are coincident with rather than independent of respiratory issues.
Does anyone know what Keir Starmer's official policy is on having restrictions during the New Year period? Is he supporting Johnson, or is he with Sturgeon and Drakeford?
He’s sitting on the fence waiting to see which way it goes after the event.
Mr Hindsight
You’re back on the Johnson train again then? Your latest “doubt” lasted a whole day
I am a conservative who seeks the end of his premiership
I am also someone who backs HMG and utterly rejects Drakeford's Corbyn style tribute act which sees pubs and clubs in Wrexham watching in despair as their business evaporates by the bus full to nearby Chester
We also learn overnight Drakeford has banned the words 'Brexit' and Her Majesty's Government ( HMG) adding to criminalising of going into the office as well as park runs
You claim to be a Starmer fanbois but at the same time praise the Corbyn style Drakeford.
You cannot have it both ways
Have you given up on the ‘Drakefool’ thing? Shame, it was hilarious.
Seems it is becoming more common especially amongst business owners and park run organisers
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
we are, of course, all aware that these were mostly questions needed to be asked from day 1.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
we are, of course, all aware that these were mostly questions needed to be asked from day 1.
I’d give everyone an awful lot of leeway on Day 1 of a novel virus outbreak.
On Day 600, with a 90% vaccinated population - not so much.
Omicron looks safeish with vaccination. 512 kids hospitalised on boxing day isn't great though, the JCVI should approve for all 5-11 >.>
But JCVI are using a model that says that nearly no children will get COVID. Why is reality wrong, again?
I suspect too many on the jcvi are very cautious about causing harm via vaccination, and some are still hung up on getting world vaccination done rather than more in the U.K. This is despite the abundance of vaccines now, so supply is surely not limited.
One interesting thing is that vaccinated people also are not dying so fast of non-covid disease. Take that antivaxxers!
I think that I have said all along that European countries will be much of a muchness in terms of total outcomes once this is all over.
I think there will be some variation, but you then have to start accounting for so many differing factors. Germany has done better, but certainly difficult to now call it a success.
The real important questions are not really did this country do slightly better than another, its what worked and what didn't. Why did Germany do better than the UK for instance, we have some ideas in terms of how hospitals function / capacity, but were there other things? And what didn't work. And most importantly how to prepare best for the future.
Yes, the primary task of the enquiry needs to be what worked and what didn’t. Sadly, I fear it will turn into a political exercise, with people motivated primarily by being seen to cover their arse, than to assist with preparing for the next pandemic.
I would get someone with experience in the AAIB or RIAB to run it, rather than a judge.
It will be years of waffling and end up as a whitewash. Best wishes to your brother and family, hope all goes well for them.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
It's a bunch of fanboys accusing other people of being fanboys whilst upvoting each other around how good the Tories are at handling the pandemic and how bad Welsh Labour is.
It's an odd thing to see, because it's exactly the approach Labour took in GE19. It can't be us who is the problem, it must be the voters that are wrong!
There seems to be no effort at all to learn why Welsh Labour are doing so well in Wales, instead just attacking Drakeford and telling us how rubbish he is. But the voters seem to disagree, with the latest MRP seeing the Tories almost run out of Wales and Labour doing the best its done there since 2001.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
As I commented earlier it does seem as if the media are finally catching on
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
It's a bunch of fanboys accusing other people of being fanboys whilst upvoting each other around how good the Tories are at handling the pandemic and how bad Welsh Labour is.
It's an odd thing to see, because it's exactly the approach Labour took in GE19. It can't be us who is the problem, it must be the voters that are wrong!
There seems to be no effort at all to learn why Welsh Labour are doing so well in Wales, instead just attacking Drakeford and telling us how rubbish he is. But the voters seem to disagree, with the latest MRP seeing the Tories almost run out of Wales and Labour doing the best its done there since 2001.
It does seem like they’re in a bubble. Complaining about the mainstream media is a classic symptom.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Yes, if might be time to let asymptomatic or those with very mild symptoms work the COVID wards to free up uninflected staff to work elsewhere.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Drakeford will surely be resigning any day now, just as Starmer will be.
*Checks notes*
Labour 9 points ahead and Drakeford polling the best for Welsh Labour since 2001.
It’s a marathon not a sprint. Johnson has great poll leads at times during the Pandemic. The Welsh govt and Scottish regime have not handled Covid well either but have benefitted from the focus of the negative press being the UK govt.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Everything about this is politics. You could argue the welsh and Scottish governments are doing exactly the same with their approach to Omicron.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
It's a bunch of fanboys accusing other people of being fanboys whilst upvoting each other around how good the Tories are at handling the pandemic and how bad Welsh Labour is.
It's an odd thing to see, because it's exactly the approach Labour took in GE19. It can't be us who is the problem, it must be the voters that are wrong!
There seems to be no effort at all to learn why Welsh Labour are doing so well in Wales, instead just attacking Drakeford and telling us how rubbish he is. But the voters seem to disagree, with the latest MRP seeing the Tories almost run out of Wales and Labour doing the best its done there since 2001.
As explained to you several times yesterday Labour have huge support in the valleys and sadly in the most deprived parts of Wales which they have left neglected for decades
Labour did not get a majority and needed a coalition with the Greens to govern
I seek the end of Boris premiership and will do whatever I can to bring that about
However, it remains the case I would not support a labour government whose answer to every problem is to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
Foxy pointed out last night that other serious symptoms can occur independently of lung issues.
I believe there can be other proximate causes of death (@Foxy ‘s point) - my father ultimately died of renal failure / multiple organ failure - but the data I’ve seen suggest these are coincident with rather than independent of respiratory issues.
But surely they are expected to correlate quite well, as covid causes all those problems?
Drakeford will surely be resigning any day now, just as Starmer will be.
*Checks notes*
Labour 9 points ahead and Drakeford polling the best for Welsh Labour since 2001.
It’s a marathon not a sprint. Johnson has great poll leads at times during the Pandemic. The Welsh govt and Scottish regime have not handled Covid well either but have benefitted from the focus of the negative press being the UK govt.
If you think that the media in Scotland have not been giving the ‘Scottish regime’ a negative press, I have a Boris bridge to sell you.
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
This type of scrutiny from the MSM is unlikely to happen any time soon, but the Fraser Nelson episode was interesting. It came about by JP Morgan running its own data projections. They (or others) could usefully turn their attention to the data on hospitalisations and NHS resourcing. Ultimately with Covid we are clearly in a prolonged period of mass panic and hysteria, and it is very difficult to work out what the truth is. I suppose you just need to keep your head down and hope it passes soon.
Fraser Nelson was a real turning point. Someone followed by a lot of senior Conservative politicians, asking questions that hadn’t previously been asked, of those providing the data to the government decision-makers.
It was a turning point but whether Nelson or the Tory CRG understand what is being modelled is another question, though perhaps moot.
I’m still not entirely sure what was going on. I’d suggest that a decent range of modelling was being done, but selected models were getting to cabinet, and those didn’t include the actual best case scenarios. I don’t know why or who, but I suspect the civil service of trying to steer things...
It might also be that people's eyes glaze over when confronted with numbers. There is a commonly held view that graphs are ideal for displaying quantitative information (Tufte etc) but my experience is of managers and indeed senior civil servants asking for "top 10" tables rather than graphs. We've seen it on pb as well, with @Malmesbury's graphs being ignored till someone finds the same information in a tweet.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
Everything about this is politics. You could argue the welsh and Scottish governments are doing exactly the same with their approach to Omicron.
I don’t think the devolved assemblies or for that matter half of the cabinet conduct a covid policy motivated by party poll numbers or achieving good press on Conservative home or in aid of leadership ambitions. On PB everything is seen through that lens. It’s weird.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
As I commented earlier it does seem as if the media are finally catching on
Just a couple of weeks ago people were claiming on here that SA was better prepared for the Omicron wave than the UK was, and that we should rely on modelling rather than their real world data for the potential impact of Omicron.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Yes, if might be time to let asymptomatic or those with very mild symptoms work the COVID wards to free up uninflected staff to work elsewhere.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Teachers unions will go mental. All the teachers calling in to the radio basically want zero-covid.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
... However, it remains the case I would not support a labour government whose answer to every problem is to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it
You mean that they would be worse than a Conservative Govt whose answer to every problem has been to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it?
Drakeford will surely be resigning any day now, just as Starmer will be.
*Checks notes*
Labour 9 points ahead and Drakeford polling the best for Welsh Labour since 2001.
It’s a marathon not a sprint. Johnson has great poll leads at times during the Pandemic. The Welsh govt and Scottish regime have not handled Covid well either but have benefitted from the focus of the negative press being the UK govt.
If you think that the media in Scotland have not been giving the ‘Scottish regime’ a negative press, I have a Boris bridge to sell you.
Curious thread. Tories still trying to conjure up some party political advantage out of Omicron. Smells a little desperate, but perhaps understandable after the last few weeks. If they were wise they would shut up, try to govern and hope people forget that they party while others lock down.
It's a bunch of fanboys accusing other people of being fanboys whilst upvoting each other around how good the Tories are at handling the pandemic and how bad Welsh Labour is.
It's an odd thing to see, because it's exactly the approach Labour took in GE19. It can't be us who is the problem, it must be the voters that are wrong!
There seems to be no effort at all to learn why Welsh Labour are doing so well in Wales, instead just attacking Drakeford and telling us how rubbish he is. But the voters seem to disagree, with the latest MRP seeing the Tories almost run out of Wales and Labour doing the best its done there since 2001.
It does seem like they’re in a bubble. Complaining about the mainstream media is a classic symptom.
Just thinking that on PB it's usually the Unionists who complain about the Scottish media being supposedly pro-SNP government. This is odd as it is usually generally agreed by PB Unionists that the only pro-indy newspaper is the National, usually referred to slightingly, partly with some justice because of its rather threadbare design, but also as if the very idea of a pro-SNP newspaper is somehow against nature, like a three-legged budgie. Somethijng wrong with their collective logic.
I do occasionally complain in the other vein but usually about the modern Scotsman and Herald/National stablemates not being a proper replacement to the middle of the road Scotsman and Herald of old. Which is at least a middle of thje road approach.
Good morning one and all. Unseasonably mild. Mrs C is darkly forecasting that 'we'll pay for it in mid to late January', but if our visitors have made it home we won't mind too much.
Not feeling too confident about the economic future myself, although I did my income tax completed yesterday, which cheered me somewhat.
Hey OKC, best wishes to you both and hope you had a good Christmas
Thank you Horse. Same to you. We are left with a Christmas mystery; a bag of presents went missing and still hasn't been found!
How strange, they will surely turn up in the most unexpected of places
I'd need a lot of convincing to consent to the vaccination of my young son. The vaccinations don't stop transmission, only serious illness; I need hard evidence that vaccines prevent life threatening illness in kids given that we know that the vaccines themselves are not without risks, such as the AZ blood clotting issues which caused a significant number of deaths and everyone now seems to have been forgotten about. I wouldn't like to be the person that administered a vaccine that killed a 5 year old. Such an event, which could well happen, will destroy all confidence in vaccination and government messaging about vaccination. It would probably bring down the government.
In the USA more children are now dying of covid many weeks than childhood cancers. Neither are common of course.
Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.
While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.
Good morning one and all. Unseasonably mild. Mrs C is darkly forecasting that 'we'll pay for it in mid to late January', but if our visitors have made it home we won't mind too much.
Not feeling too confident about the economic future myself, although I did my income tax completed yesterday, which cheered me somewhat.
Hey OKC, best wishes to you both and hope you had a good Christmas
Thank you Horse. Same to you. We are left with a Christmas mystery; a bag of presents went missing and still hasn't been found!
How strange, they will surely turn up in the most unexpected of places
Ebay?
Left on a car roof or in the garden when loading up a car?
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no restrictions in England apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
Massive ‘he’s probably not being c*nty but even if he is it’s perfectly ok’ klaxon.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
If Mr Johnson is so proud of his approach and his support for the travel industry, why isn't he publicising this?
... However, it remains the case I would not support a labour government whose answer to every problem is to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it
You mean that they would be worse than a Conservative Govt whose answer to every problem has been to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it?
The conservative government has faced the biggest crisis since the war and like governments worldwide wide have spent vast sums to ameliorate the worst effects
Spending in a pandemic is not to be compared with normal times
It should also be noted that all Labour have done throughout this crisis is demand billions more
Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.
While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.
Good morning one and all. Unseasonably mild. Mrs C is darkly forecasting that 'we'll pay for it in mid to late January', but if our visitors have made it home we won't mind too much.
Not feeling too confident about the economic future myself, although I did my income tax completed yesterday, which cheered me somewhat.
Hey OKC, best wishes to you both and hope you had a good Christmas
Thank you Horse. Same to you. We are left with a Christmas mystery; a bag of presents went missing and still hasn't been found!
You were specially selected to trial the new redistributive Santa, this year.
... However, it remains the case I would not support a labour government whose answer to every problem is to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it
You mean that they would be worse than a Conservative Govt whose answer to every problem has been to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it?
The conservative government has faced the biggest crisis since the war and like governments worldwide wide have spent vast sums to ameliorate the worst effects
Spending in a pandemic is not to be compared with normal times
It should also be noted that all Labour have done throughout this crisis is demand billions more
Nah. The Tories deserve exactly the same credit and leeway they gave Labour for managing the financial crisis.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Yes, if might be time to let asymptomatic or those with very mild symptoms work the COVID wards to free up uninflected staff to work elsewhere.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Teachers unions will go mental. All the teachers calling in to the radio basically want zero-covid.
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole profession by those who are obsessive enough to phone in to a radio show during the holidays.
The unions already are mental on the subject, to the extent that I am looking to use my position as a senior officer in one of them to table a motion of no confidence in the general Secretary at next year's conference. The idiot still wants masks and are obsessed with them to the exclusion of more practical measures that might actually fecking work.
I think the real problem, bluntly, is that we all know Omicron is going to go charging through schools. And actually, while it isn't as serious as Delta according to the information we have, it's still going to be far more disruptive than an ordinary cold, where you might have 3-4% off at any one time - this looks more like 10-12% could be off at any one time.
That's even if you abandon the isolation requirements.
Therefore, some questions: (1) how do we minimise disruption to Year 11 and 13 cohorts, who still have exams and many of whom have already been more buggered than a reluctant Turkish conscript due to the incompetence with which the government has arranged remote learning? (2) Who pays for the extra measures, especially supply teachers? One fifth of schools are technically bankrupt after last year already. They can't afford significant numbers of supply out of their own budgets. (3) Even if that can be resolved, where do supply teachers come from? There's already a shortage as many left during the lockdowns (due to no money) and are not coming back. Retired teachers are not going to be any help, as I have said before. (4) This means that either we abandon the testing regime altogether and act pretty much as you advocate, or we are accepting that some schools will have to move to what's called 'blended learning' I.e. some year groups taught at home for some days a week.
And yet the government, in their infinite fucking stupidity, are actually ramping up testing.
Good morning one and all. Unseasonably mild. Mrs C is darkly forecasting that 'we'll pay for it in mid to late January', but if our visitors have made it home we won't mind too much.
Not feeling too confident about the economic future myself, although I did my income tax completed yesterday, which cheered me somewhat.
Hey OKC, best wishes to you both and hope you had a good Christmas
Thank you Horse. Same to you. We are left with a Christmas mystery; a bag of presents went missing and still hasn't been found!
How strange, they will surely turn up in the most unexpected of places
Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.
While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.
Did the stream of PB’ers so keen to condemn ‘doxxing’ not stop to consider whether quoting and hence re-posting the original post would make things better or worse?
Good morning one and all. Unseasonably mild. Mrs C is darkly forecasting that 'we'll pay for it in mid to late January', but if our visitors have made it home we won't mind too much.
Not feeling too confident about the economic future myself, although I did my income tax completed yesterday, which cheered me somewhat.
Hey OKC, best wishes to you both and hope you had a good Christmas
Thank you Horse. Same to you. We are left with a Christmas mystery; a bag of presents went missing and still hasn't been found!
You were specially selected to trial the new redistributive Santa, this year.
Suspect that while our car was being unloaded a passing yoof took his opportunity, but as it was in a cul-de-sac seems odd.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
25 to 80% doesn't sound positive to me, the virus isn't THAT prevalent
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
Foxy pointed out last night that other serious symptoms can occur independently of lung issues.
I believe there can be other proximate causes of death (@Foxy ‘s point) - my father ultimately died of renal failure / multiple organ failure - but the data I’ve seen suggest these are coincident with rather than independent of respiratory issues.
But surely they are expected to correlate quite well, as covid causes all those problems?
They do
The point was (IMV) ventilation is a worthwhile stat to track as most (if not all) COVID deaths involve ventilation regardless of the proximate cause of death
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
As I commented earlier it does seem as if the media are finally catching on
Just a couple of weeks ago people were claiming on here that SA was better prepared for the Omicron wave than the UK was, and that we should rely on modelling rather than their real world data for the potential impact of Omicron.
No they weren't, they were saying that the SA data looked encouraging, but there might be differences which might be significant between their population and ours. So observe SA but also model, and await events here. You just didn't understand this point.
Aristotle said that the function of intelligence is to observe and understand the differences between similar things. I wonder where that leaves you.
Friends of brother in law had a big intergenerational Christmas get together. One member of the family brought Covid to the party. Now they've all got it.
I note the short incubation period.
Meanwhile, I have woken up with a headache. Let's see what this morning's LFT shows...
... However, it remains the case I would not support a labour government whose answer to every problem is to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it
You mean that they would be worse than a Conservative Govt whose answer to every problem has been to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it?
The conservative government has faced the biggest crisis since the war and like governments worldwide wide have spent vast sums to ameliorate the worst effects
Spending in a pandemic is not to be compared with normal times
It should also be noted that all Labour have done throughout this crisis is demand billions more
I am sure that if it were a Labour govt facing this "... biggest crisis since the war ..." then they would also be spending "... vast sums to ameliorate the worst effects ..." - and I have no doubt you would be criticising them for it!
By all means criticise the Opposition for doing the wrong thing, but if all you are going to do is praise up your own side for doing what you criticise the other side for, then you just come across as daft or at worst, hypocritical.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Yes, if might be time to let asymptomatic or those with very mild symptoms work the COVID wards to free up uninflected staff to work elsewhere.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Teachers unions will go mental. All the teachers calling in to the radio basically want zero-covid.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
Isn't that a well known fact? An acquaintance of mine died of covid acquired in hospital. The Nightingales could have kept the covid patients separate from others.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
Boris does like his exotic holidays but the interesting thing is that if he has eschewed the traditional Chequers Christmas, that undermines the notion that a fondness for that country house will mean Boris (and Carrie) will be desperate to cling on to power.
I still question whether ventilators are the right thing to be tracking if Omicron does not impact the lungs in the same way.
As for admissions, referring to incidental admissions as the get out clause feels awfully similar to what was said around Delta and also those that said we’d reached herd immunity in summer 2020.
How will Omicron cause death without impacting the lungs? That’s effectively what you are tracking.
Foxy pointed out last night that other serious symptoms can occur independently of lung issues.
I believe there can be other proximate causes of death (@Foxy ‘s point) - my father ultimately died of renal failure / multiple organ failure - but the data I’ve seen suggest these are coincident with rather than independent of respiratory issues.
But surely they are expected to correlate quite well, as covid causes all those problems?
They do
The point was (IMV) ventilation is a worthwhile stat to track as most (if not all) COVID deaths involve ventilation regardless of the proximate cause of death
This works if non-lung deaths correlate with lung-deaths. The question for Omi is whether this relationship still exists given what we know about it so far (upper respiratory).
Canada is allowing health care employees who test positive to continue working since too many of them were testing positive, probably with the new variant.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Yes, if might be time to let asymptomatic or those with very mild symptoms work the COVID wards to free up uninflected staff to work elsewhere.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Teachers unions will go mental. All the teachers calling in to the radio basically want zero-covid.
I wouldn't necessarily judge the whole profession by those who are obsessive enough to phone in to a radio show during the holidays.
The unions already are mental on the subject, to the extent that I am looking to use my position as a senior officer in one of them to table a motion of no confidence in the general Secretary at next year's conference. The idiot still wants masks and are obsessed with them to the exclusion of more practical measures that might actually fecking work.
I think the real problem, bluntly, is that we all know Omicron is going to go charging through schools. And actually, while it isn't as serious as Delta according to the information we have, it's still going to be far more disruptive than an ordinary cold, where you might have 3-4% off at any one time - this looks more like 10-12% could be off at any one time.
That's even if you abandon the isolation requirements.
Therefore, some questions: (1) how do we minimise disruption to Year 11 and 13 cohorts, who still have exams and many of whom have already been more buggered than a reluctant Turkish conscript due to the incompetence with which the government has arranged remote learning? (2) Who pays for the extra measures, especially supply teachers? One fifth of schools are technically bankrupt after last year already. They can't afford significant numbers of supply out of their own budgets. (3) Even if that can be resolved, where do supply teachers come from? There's already a shortage as many left during the lockdowns (due to no money) and are not coming back. Retired teachers are not going to be any help, as I have said before. (4) This means that either we abandon the testing regime altogether and act pretty much as you advocate, or we are accepting that some schools will have to move to what's called 'blended learning' I.e. some year groups taught at home for some days a week.
And yet the government, in their infinite fucking stupidity, are actually ramping up testing.
It's an unholy mess.
I'm very sorry for Years 11 & 13, and for those who are trying to teach and counsel them. Those two years are tough enough with all the normal pressures. All the 'you've got to do well well in your GCSE's/You need 3 A's to get to the Uni you want.' Then you might be off at a crucial moment. Don't envy them normally, but this and the last couple of years have been dreadful.
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
So the South Africans aren’t a different breed of humans after all? Who’d of thunk it. It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
Yes, if might be time to let asymptomatic or those with very mild symptoms work the COVID wards to free up uninflected staff to work elsewhere.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Teachers unions will go mental. All the teachers calling in to the radio basically want zero-covid.
Want zero-covid or more time off?
In my experience, schools simply want to be left alone to teach. They do not want to be forced by the government to implement public health policy on the cheap.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Apparently Boris is speaking later this morning, so I doubt even he is not stupid enough to be in Mustique
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
Did the stream of PB’ers so keen to condemn ‘doxxing’ not stop to consider whether quoting and hence re-posting the original post would make things better or worse?
Yes. What's your point? Everyone knows who our two most doxxed PBs are so, ironically, doxxing those two is unnecessary as well as unpleasant.
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Apparently Boris is speaking later this morning, so I doubt even he is not stupid enough to be in Mustique
Surely there’s very few MPs, certainly not Ministers, out of the country, given there was a reasonable chance Parliament was going to get recalled this week?
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Apparently Boris is speaking later this morning, so I doubt even he is not stupid enough to be in Mustique
Telegraph saying that incidental admissions rate is now around 80% of the daily announced figures, up from 40%. That's similar to what we heard from SA which was ~75% incidental admissions during their Omicron wave.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
Either 25 or 80% sounds high frankly - say 3 million have Covid, you'd expect 3/67ths of the population being admitted to a hospital to have "incidental Covid" ?
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
Isn't that a well known fact? An acquaintance of mine died of covid acquired in hospital. The Nightingales could have kept the covid patients separate from others.
Well there's another issue. 'Incidental covid' is always sold as the broken leg in with covid....
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Apparently Boris is speaking later this morning, so I doubt even he is not stupid enough to be in Mustique
Surely there’s very few MPs, certainly not Ministers, out of the country, given there was a reasonable chance Parliament was going to get recalled this week?
Anyone know where the FLSOJ is currently holed up? Curious lack of his reassuring tones in and on the media. There’s some twitter chat that he and Nut Nut are in Mustique but surely even he wouldn’t be that cretinously tin eared. Would he?
There are no Covid restrictions in England now apart from vaxports for nightclubs and large events. There is no foreign travel ban either and the UK airline and travel industry desperately needs a boost.
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
So are you suggesting it would be OK for Mr and Mrs Johnson to fly to Mustique on Government trade business, of course (assuming that is where they are) because he didn't impose any further sanctions before he returns on New Year's Day (perish the thought)? Although...kinda handy doncha think? A bit like Pakistan and Bangladesh, but not India being on an earlier red list.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Apparently Boris is speaking later this morning, so I doubt even he is not stupid enough to be in Mustique
Surely there’s very few MPs, certainly not Ministers, out of the country, given there was a reasonable chance Parliament was going to get recalled this week?
Sunak probably had an urgent visit to his holiday home high level business meeting scheduled.
Comments
As others have pointed out, too much of our freight is RORO to have put effective travel bans in place anyway.
Something which, with it's clampdown on school trips and fees for overseas students, this government seems to have set it's face against.
News from Poland: three-quarters of Covid dead unvaccinated; most of vaccinated victims elderly and already sick:
Poland is reporting 794 Covid-related deaths on Wednesday, the highest daily number in the fourth wave of pandemic.
Deputy minister of health Waldemar Kraska made the announcement on broadcaster Polsat News on Wednesday morning, adding that 600 people were not vaccinated at the time of their deaths.
Kraska told the outlet:
They could go on living if they had the vaccine. The average age of the remaining deceased is over 75; They were burdened with many diseases: obesity, hypertension, heart diseases or cancer.”
The country also reported another 15,571 new daily coronavirus cases.
Poland has been dealing with persistently high daily case numbers in a fourth wave that has forced authorities to tighten restrictions.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2021/dec/29/covid-news-live-infections-hit-record-highs-across-europe-south-africa-reinstates-contact-tracing-and-isolation
We have to start to impose these rules because there are a stack of countries ready to take us to the WTO for giving illegal preferential terms to the EU. But we aren't ready, and hauliers sensibly are saying "fuck that" at the prospect of having their vehicle stuck in Ashford over a weekend because one line on one page of one item of the thousands on their groupage load is wrong.
I've already been told that the pallet load chilled imports we have been doing happily so far (as the GB authorities aren't checking) are now likely impossible. We need to be doing full loads which we can't as the business hasn't grown sufficiently and now won't do if we can't import.
I expect we will get through this by simply dropping the 1st Jan / 1st April / 1st July implementation. Which isn't a long-term fix. Our border model doesn't work as drawn up...
The way I see see the various Brexit changes since last January is a series of bureaucratic micro-aggressions against business. They all add up. It’s so utterly pointless. But good news for customs advisers.
The SA data is backing that up, the number of hospitalisations is tiny compared to Delta and in Guateng the number in hospital is now falling very quickly.
https://www.nicd.ac.za/diseases-a-z-index/disease-index-covid-19/surveillance-reports/daily-hospital-surveillance-datcov-report/
I do detect a slight change in the media this morning where they seem to be indicating that NHS staff off with omicron is more of a problem than admissions and querying if HMG in England will follow the US in reducing isolation from 7 to 5 days. Of course Wales and Scotland are still on 10 days as they cannot concede England's health advisors have this right
Furthermore the obsession with case numbers is misleading, as indeed are the admission numbers if the main reason for hospital admission is not covid/omicron but another health issue
It is time that the public were given accurate information on the balance between the two and also on those admitted because of covid/ omicron how long is the average stay and just how many are seriously ill with omicron together with the age groups
We deserve much better independent reliable information and may I suggest a much better standard of journalism that has been on display throughout the pandemic
A quick scan suggests lots of stories about Scots and Welsh heading for Berwick, Newcastle, Carlisle, Bristol, Blackpool and Liverpool to see in 2022 - and lots of unhappy pub owners in the devolved administrations.
Whitty & Co were heavily pushing for one and were even trying to dismiss the SA data as not relevant.
The problem wasn't with the 99.5% of people who caught Polio but the 0.5% who caught "Long" Polio. And we don't know what long or even medium term Omicron looks like.
I am also someone who backs HMG and utterly rejects Drakeford's Corbyn style tribute act which sees pubs and clubs in Wrexham watching in despair as their business evaporates by the bus full to nearby Chester
We also learn overnight Drakeford has banned the words 'Brexit' and Her Majesty's Government ( HMG) adding to criminalising of going into the office as well as park runs
You claim to be a Starmer fanbois but at the same time praise the Corbyn style Drakeford.
You cannot have it both ways
I do think that when Omicron reaches China it is going to cause big issues, most directly for us in disrupting industrial production, which will compound our inflation problems, and probably create some severe shortages for a variety of goods.
For what’s it’s worth Johnson needs to be gone ASAP for the country’s sake, but for Labour you probably want him still in No 10. Starmer has always sided on the cautious side through the pandemic. It’s politically easy to do as there is no cost (to him) in calling for more restrictions, especially with a terrified nation who quite likes restrictions (especially on other people). Some of the things he has called for have been wrong, in my view. Circuit-breakers are useless, as shown in Wales. If you need to get cases down you need to go the whole hog.
Other issues I’d say he is right. It’s too easy for well off people to wfh and isolate etc, without appreciating that many of the less well off can’t easily do the same. If we are claiming measures are being taken for the common good then not helping everyone isolate who needs too is crazy.
We do not have a ‘winner’ yet over omicron. It could still turn very messy in England, and the more cautious parts of the U.K. may end with a better result. Or omicron could be a paper tiger and the English approach will have worked.
We don’t know yet, but will do soon(ish). I note that labour has shifted its approach now.
*Checks notes*
Labour 9 points ahead and Drakeford polling the best for Welsh Labour since 2001.
Overall bed occupancy and ICU occupancy is steady or down. These two are the ones to watch.
On Day 600, with a 90% vaccinated population - not so much.
It’s becoming clearer that the threat to healthcare in the next month is mainly staff illness/isolation, and not increased patients in icu.
It's an odd thing to see, because it's exactly the approach Labour took in GE19. It can't be us who is the problem, it must be the voters that are wrong!
There seems to be no effort at all to learn why Welsh Labour are doing so well in Wales, instead just attacking Drakeford and telling us how rubbish he is. But the voters seem to disagree, with the latest MRP seeing the Tories almost run out of Wales and Labour doing the best its done there since 2001.
It's also time to let kids go to school infected and let parents judge whether their kids are too ill to go in as they do with every other type of illness. Teachers too should be released from isolation rules for asymptomatic and mild symptoms.
By Easter we should get rid of isolation altogether, let people judge for themselves whether they are too ill to go to work/socialise.
Labour did not get a majority and needed a coalition with the Greens to govern
I seek the end of Boris premiership and will do whatever I can to bring that about
However, it remains the case I would not support a labour government whose answer to every problem is to spend billions without any idea how to pay for it
Even if he is it may not be as tin eared as you think. If Sturgeon or Drakeford did it however it would be given the extra restrictions they have imposed in Scotland and Wales. As Boris is pursuing a more libertarian approach in England however it would not now be hypocritical for him
I do occasionally complain in the other vein but usually about the modern Scotsman and Herald/National stablemates not being a proper replacement to the middle of the road Scotsman and Herald of old. Which is at least a middle of thje road approach.
Telegraph:
Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.
While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.
The UK gas price rocketed to a record 470p per therm last week, up from just 50p in April, but has since fallen to under 270p.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/12/28/cargo-ships-divert-gas-china-britain/
Spending in a pandemic is not to be compared with normal times
It should also be noted that all Labour have done throughout this crisis is demand billions more
Also a useful exercise, in noting just how much gas can be got into Europe in the face of a Russian blockade.
https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1476034176524693504?s=20
https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1476009363689123849?s=20
The unions already are mental on the subject, to the extent that I am looking to use my position as a senior officer in one of them to table a motion of no confidence in the general Secretary at next year's conference. The idiot still wants masks and are obsessed with them to the exclusion of more practical measures that might actually fecking work.
I think the real problem, bluntly, is that we all know Omicron is going to go charging through schools. And actually, while it isn't as serious as Delta according to the information we have, it's still going to be far more disruptive than an ordinary cold, where you might have 3-4% off at any one time - this looks more like 10-12% could be off at any one time.
That's even if you abandon the isolation requirements.
Therefore, some questions: (1) how do we minimise disruption to Year 11 and 13 cohorts, who still have exams and many of whom have already been more buggered than a reluctant Turkish conscript due to the incompetence with which the government has arranged remote learning? (2) Who pays for the extra measures, especially supply teachers? One fifth of schools are technically bankrupt after last year already. They can't afford significant numbers of supply out of their own budgets. (3) Even if that can be resolved, where do supply teachers come from? There's already a shortage as many left during the lockdowns (due to no money) and are not coming back. Retired teachers are not going to be any help, as I have said before. (4) This means that either we abandon the testing regime altogether and act pretty much as you advocate, or we are accepting that some schools will have to move to what's called 'blended learning' I.e. some year groups taught at home for some days a week.
And yet the government, in their infinite fucking stupidity, are actually ramping up testing.
It's an unholy mess.
Indicates a large amount of transmission in hospitals ?
25 to 80% doesn't sound positive to me, the virus isn't THAT prevalent
The point was (IMV) ventilation is a worthwhile stat to track as most (if not all) COVID deaths involve ventilation regardless of the proximate cause of death
Aristotle said that the function of intelligence is to observe and understand the differences between similar things. I wonder where that leaves you.
Friends of brother in law had a big intergenerational Christmas get together. One member of the family brought Covid to the party. Now they've all got it.
I note the short incubation period.
Meanwhile, I have woken up with a headache. Let's see what this morning's LFT shows...
By all means criticise the Opposition for doing the wrong thing, but if all you are going to do is praise up your own side for doing what you criticise the other side for, then you just come across as daft or at worst, hypocritical.
I am sure this can't be true...can it?
Then you might be off at a crucial moment.
Don't envy them normally, but this and the last couple of years have been dreadful.
https://alastair-meeks.medium.com/the-end-of-the-affair-moving-from-pandemic-to-endemic-c1159c652205
Bartholomew will find it helpful as it leans towards his view, though he may want to note AM's point about why the public is slow to move in that direction. I'm gradually shifting myself towards accepting Omicron as something to live with, for the reasons AM sets out.
visit to his holiday homehigh level business meeting scheduled.