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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
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!
I found myself dumping used Christmas paper into a black bag that seemingly already contained other such paper. It later materialised that I'd unwittingly thrown out a bunch of presents, which were thankfully later recovered.
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
Let's hope not.
Although Mr Cox managed it from a similar location. Lots of Union flags should do the trick.
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.
Describing Sinopharm as "Mickey Mouse" is dangerously close to antivax nonsense. Sinopharm is certainly safe and effective against Covid-19 infections and serious illness. Even Coronvac is much better than nothing, although apparently significantly less effective than many other vaccines.
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.
There might not be a travel ban but I can tell you a fuck load less people are searching for flights than they were 6 weeks ago.
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.
(do we know why he left?)
Debate over BREXIT got so heated, that he was involved with, got so heated that he didn't want to be here anymore.
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?
Well Rishi Sunak might have been living it large in Laguna Beach over Crimbo had he not been busted.
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.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
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!
I found myself dumping used Christmas paper into a black bag that seemingly already contained other such paper. It later materialised that I'd unwittingly thrown out a bunch of presents, which were thankfully later recovered.
I wondered that myself but son-in-law, at whose house we were assures us he's gone through everything. I might well ask him again.
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.
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.
There might not be a travel ban but I can tell you a fuck load less people are searching for flights than they were 6 weeks ago.
Some may not be, which is even more reason to give a boost to our airline and travel industry and its workers given there are no travel or flight bans this holiday period
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.
Describing Sinopharm as "Mickey Mouse" is dangerously close to antivax nonsense. Sinopharm is certainly safe and effective against Covid-19 infections and serious illness. Even Coronvac is much better than nothing, although apparently significantly less effective than many other vaccines.
Younger son, a frequent business visitor to China had two Sinopharm vaccinations so that when he could go again he could! Then he was told that the British wouldn't accept Sinopharm vaccinations as vaccinations so to come back to Uk he (and his family) had Pfizer. I don't what, if anything he proposes to do for boosters. He and his family, over here for the 'holidays, still test every two days.
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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
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
We've currently got about 160k hospital beds total in this country, and 8k are occupied by people with Covid. So if between 140k and 160k beds are full right now and 20% are there specifically for Covid reasons, then that implies about 4-4.5% of the non-Covid admissions also have Covid, which is bang in line with your 3/67 estimate.
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.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
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
Let's hope not.
Although Mr Cox managed it from a similar location. Lots of Union flags should do the trick.
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...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
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.
Excellent from Mr Meeks as always. From the start there have only been two longer term possibilities within our powers: extinction (rapidly and rightly dismissed early) and sensibly accept, live with, research and adapt.
(It might blow itself out, but that isn't in our gift).
So I agree, as usual with Mr Meeks. Except that he overestimates the role of government, which is bound to be useless in the area of communications, and underestimates the roles of ordinary individuals to use their judgement, and the role of the NHS/public health to turn this into another fairly depoliticised recurring health management issue.
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.
Describing Sinopharm as "Mickey Mouse" is dangerously close to antivax nonsense. Sinopharm is certainly safe and effective against Covid-19 infections and serious illness. Even Coronvac is much better than nothing, although apparently significantly less effective than many other vaccines.
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
Let's hope not.
Although Mr Cox managed it from a similar location. Lots of Union flags should do the trick.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
The more serious point is that individual experiences of doctors are indicators of where to do scientific enquiry, not the results of scientific enquiry, themselves.
The history of medicine is full of mistakes and wrong answers caused by personal experience being used instead of scientific research.
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...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
Boxing Day family gathering of 11 and football last night, but negative LFT so no excuse to miss work. Lots of no shows in clinic though.
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...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
Boxing Day family gathering of 11 and football last night, but negative LFT so no excuse to miss work. Lots of no shows in clinic though.
Great result yesterday. Sorry to hear you have to be at work though.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
The more serious point is that individual experiences of doctors are indicators of where to do scientific enquiry, not the results of scientific enquiry, themselves.
The history of medicine is full of mistakes and wrong answers caused by personal experience being used instead of scientific research.
When I was concerned with these things I spent quite a lot of time 'discussing' with GP's why their experience of one or two patients wasn't necessarily typical.
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...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
Perhaps that other endemic virus known as Hangover?
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
One key problem for most of my colleagues, that didn't of course apply to me, was that they were trying to homeschool their own children at the same time as teach other children online.
Which was very, very tough for them.
ETA - I would point out though that the restrictions we had to work under in schools last year were in many cases just as intolerable.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
Can I ask a silly question - why do the 2 options in the chart not add up to 100%? It seems to be a 2 option Yes/No question, so according to me it should do that.
Can I ask a silly question - why do the 2 options in the chart not add up to 100%? It seems to be a 2 option Yes/No question, so according to me it should do that.
Implied chance from betting odds always adds up to >100%. That's the margin the bookies make the profit from.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
I still have my pant mask in my draw at work.
I'm disappointed you didn't say your pant mask was in your drawers.
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
75% of Covid patients being incidental admissions doesn’t mean 75% of patients are infected. If the rate of hospitalisation due to Covid is low enough (and I don’t know the numbers) then you could get the incidental rate quoted.
If 3/67ths of patients are admitted with incidental Covid and 1/67th are admitted due to Covid, then the maths works.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
And yet it seems that the teaching unions have been doing their best to prod government in the direction of remote learning, not just before but after mass vaccination. The EIS in Scotland was in the advance guard of the Omicronpanic, for example, despite the Scottish Government's more cautious approach.
They certainly appear at the very least to be quite sanguine about a return to measures that supposedly make their members miserable. Hmmm...
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
Kate McCann of Sky even admitting omicron looks more like a cold and suggesting the 7 day period of isolation to 5 may come about
Just switched it on a few minutes ago and she even mentioned the possibility of abolishing the isolation period altogether.
Its only a matter of time now. When I first said it a couple of weeks ago certain individuals acted as if I'd just suggested necrophilia, but in just a couple of weeks it seems the conversation has moved on in a sensible direction so rapidly that this is now being seriously mooted.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
And yet it seems that the teaching unions have been doing their best to prod government in the direction of remote learning, not just before but after mass vaccination. The EIS in Scotland was in the advance guard of the Omicronpanic, for example, despite the Scottish Government's more cautious approach.
They certainly appear at the very least to be quite sanguine about a return to measures that supposedly make their members miserable. Hmmm...
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
I still have my pant mask in my draw at work.
Sackable offence, 100%
no fet-shaming plz
Zip it. No, wait, I meant put a sock in it. No, wait... never mind.
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
Let's hope not.
Although Mr Cox managed it from a similar location. Lots of Union flags should do the trick.
Sky says he is at a vaccination centre
I must offer my unreserved apologies for doubting your boy.
And just for Barti Ddu, a 10/10 for not spending Christmas in the W. Indies.
Can I ask a silly question - why do the 2 options in the chart not add up to 100%? It seems to be a 2 option Yes/No question, so according to me it should do that.
Implied chance from betting odds always adds up to >100%. That's the margin the bookies make the profit from.
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.
Germany has 4 times as many ICU beds per capita than us.
Incidentally, I walked home from the match past the LRI casualty. 25 Ambulances on the forecourt with lights on. This means they are unable to unload. Looks like it will be very busy when I go back tomorrow.
I'd take 4x with a massive pinch of salt.
I think it's true that there was often, especially early on, a tendency to admit patients earlier, with milder symptoms in Germany, which probably had some effect. And was partly due to less concern about running out of beds.
I was wrong. Germany has 5 times as many...
Well again, I'd take it with a pinch of salt. It's one thing for hospitals to claim they have x amount of ICUs, another thing for them to actually exist, and more to the point be able to staff them. If Germany really had 5 times as many nobody would be worrying about running out of beds, my wife wouldn't have been on the point of triaging who gets an ICU last week (eventually managed to find a place in a city 80 km away and moved one intensive care patient who was deemed able to travel), they wouldn't be moving patients from one part of the country to another since weeks already. And operations wouldn't have been cancelled all over the country.
I am guessing the method of counting in different countries is probably not exactly the same in that chart.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Kate McCann of Sky even admitting omicron looks more like a cold and suggesting the 7 day period of isolation to 5 may come about
Just switched it on a few minutes ago and she even mentioned the possibility of abolishing the isolation period altogether.
Its only a matter of time now. When I first said it a couple of weeks ago certain individuals acted as if I'd just suggested necrophilia, but in just a couple of weeks it seems the conversation has moved on in a sensible direction so rapidly that this is now being seriously mooted.
Well, the logic is this;
1) This variant is so infectious nothing short of a full lockdown will stop it.
2) If we do still try measures short of that, notably isolation, we will shut down vast sectors of society and the economy due to isolation but get bugger all reward.
3) In any case, this variant seems much less serious, particularly to those who have been vaccinated, which is almost everyone who is vulnerable.
4) Therefore, why bother to start with?
Whether it's the right or wrong answer you have to admit there is a certain logic to it.
Can I ask a silly question - why do the 2 options in the chart not add up to 100%? It seems to be a 2 option Yes/No question, so according to me it should do that.
Implied chance from betting odds always adds up to >100%. That's the margin the bookies make the profit from.
Cheers. I had nor considered that applying here.
So a lowish, but not very low, overround.
I think 8% is pretty standard. Certainly you can easily find 15% in markets with many runners. Basically, the harder it is to see how badly they're screwing you, the worse you can expect it to be. Pretty easy to spot bad value in a two horse race, though, so 8% is expected.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
And yet it seems that the teaching unions have been doing their best to prod government in the direction of remote learning, not just before but after mass vaccination. The EIS in Scotland was in the advance guard of the Omicronpanic, for example, despite the Scottish Government's more cautious approach.
They certainly appear at the very least to be quite sanguine about a return to measures that supposedly make their members miserable. Hmmm...
Teachers' unions are not the same as teachers.
They belong to these unions and elect the hardliners to represent their interests. That has to count for something.
We don't have a Parliament full of Tories and Labourites despite the majority of the electorate being eco-anarchists. Because, of course, they aren't.
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.
Germany has 4 times as many ICU beds per capita than us.
Incidentally, I walked home from the match past the LRI casualty. 25 Ambulances on the forecourt with lights on. This means they are unable to unload. Looks like it will be very busy when I go back tomorrow.
I'd take 4x with a massive pinch of salt.
I think it's true that there was often, especially early on, a tendency to admit patients earlier, with milder symptoms in Germany, which probably had some effect. And was partly due to less concern about running out of beds.
I was wrong. Germany has 5 times as many...
Well again, I'd take it with a pinch of salt. It's one thing for hospitals to claim they have x amount of ICUs, another thing for them to actually exist, and more to the point be able to staff them. If Germany really had 5 times as many nobody would be worrying about running out of beds, my wife wouldn't have been on the point of triaging who gets an ICU last week (eventually managed to find a place in a city 80 km away and moved one intensive care patient who was deemed able to travel), they wouldn't be moving patients from one part of the country to another since weeks already. And operations wouldn't have been cancelled all over the country.
I am guessing the method of counting in different countries is probably not exactly the same in that chart.
Indeed. The more you look at international comparisons of medical matters, the more you come to the conclusion that excess deaths is the only true comparator. Then you get into the issue of what is categorised as a death from what. And scream.
With ICU capacity - some countries count physical equipment. Some countries count physical equipment with dedicated staff. Some countries count dedicated staff, but not the actual equipment. Some countries count potential staff and actual equipment. Some countries count dedicated staff, actual equipment and emergency use equipment that is supposed to be in storage........ Some countries count the number of weird nose hairs the local dictator has. Or something.
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.
Mmmm, I am one of the few people on here who kept pointing to the SA data and the quotes from the SA Health Minister, Doctors etc. .
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
I'm afraid when ever I see one of your posts I can never forget that in the early, heady days of Covid you made masks from your own underpants. I can see why you became such an anti-mask evangelist, mind.
I still have my pant mask in my draw at work.
I trust you washed your pants before using them as a mask.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
Well said: getting students to engage online became increasingly difficult as the lockdown went on. Teaching in person is so much more effective.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
And yet it seems that the teaching unions have been doing their best to prod government in the direction of remote learning, not just before but after mass vaccination. The EIS in Scotland was in the advance guard of the Omicronpanic, for example, despite the Scottish Government's more cautious approach.
They certainly appear at the very least to be quite sanguine about a return to measures that supposedly make their members miserable. Hmmm...
Unions tend towards the position of their members who are complaining the most.
How many teachers are furiously writing, calling, e-mailing their union reps with demands to keep the schools open vs those demanding remote working? People tend to complain about what is *not* happening *now*, rather than what *might* happen.
In many, many situations, the squeaky axle is the one that gets the grease.
Kate McCann of Sky even admitting omicron looks more like a cold and suggesting the 7 day period of isolation to 5 may come about
Just switched it on a few minutes ago and she even mentioned the possibility of abolishing the isolation period altogether.
Its only a matter of time now. When I first said it a couple of weeks ago certain individuals acted as if I'd just suggested necrophilia, but in just a couple of weeks it seems the conversation has moved on in a sensible direction so rapidly that this is now being seriously mooted.
Well, the logic is this;
1) This variant is so infectious nothing short of a full lockdown will stop it.
2) If we do still try measures short of that, notably isolation, we will shut down vast sectors of society and the economy due to isolation but get bugger all reward.
3) In any case, this variant seems much less serious, particularly to those who have been vaccinated, which is almost everyone who is vulnerable.
4) Therefore, why bother to start with?
Whether it's the right or wrong answer you have to admit there is a certain logic to it.
The other point is the quicker that Omicron replaces Delta the better so the best idea may be to let it spread as quickly as possible.
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
And yet it seems that the teaching unions have been doing their best to prod government in the direction of remote learning, not just before but after mass vaccination. The EIS in Scotland was in the advance guard of the Omicronpanic, for example, despite the Scottish Government's more cautious approach.
They certainly appear at the very least to be quite sanguine about a return to measures that supposedly make their members miserable. Hmmm...
Teachers' unions are not the same as teachers.
They belong to these unions and elect the hardliners to represent their interests. That has to count for something.
We don't have a Parliament full of Tories and Labourites despite the majority of the electorate being eco-anarchists. Because, of course, they aren't.
Do you have any idea of the turnout in union elections? Or how difficult it is finding people willing to serve in these national officer positions?
The other point to make is that very little real thought has been given to how to protect teachers from Covid, partly because the government insists we are not at risk from it (although curiously, it has never attempted to collate figures to prove this, for some obscure reason). The unions are making a lot of noise precisely to draw attention to the fact that we are at risk, and we are doing a huge amount of work under very tough conditions to try and ameliorate the worst effects, often at vast cost to ourselves. And somebody needs to. Look at the abuse frequently heaped on teachers on this very board.
The fact that they have chosen the wrong targets is very frustrating and like I say I am exploring my options to hammer home that reality to them. Equally, they are trying to ask for things the DfE, which is full of people who would be placed last in an intelligence test where they competed solely against newborns, might be willing to grant.
Their worst failure, bluntly, has been not to explore the alternatives - heat curtains, air scrubbers etc. - and put forward meaningful proposals. And unfortunately those of us actually working have had little time to do anything on our own account because of the formidable workload we've had.
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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
How many people working in the Costa tourist industry pay tax in the UK?
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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
No I'm not and I traveled quite a bit during the pandemic, but there is a difference re appearances. If Boris (unlike the rest of us) did take an exotic trip he would be slaughter in the press and if you don't realise that you are even more out of touch than you appear.
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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
How many people working in the Costa tourist industry pay tax in the UK?
Are you suggesting their tax arrangements Costa pretty penny?
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?
Remote learning has introduced teachers to a lifestyle not unlike that of a university lecturer. They impart knowledge and mark papers, free of any responsibility for the sometimes appalling behaviour of their charges. It's small wonder that some of them would like more of the same.
Do you actually talk to many teachers? Most of them hate working from home; it's a nightmare, and almost impossible to do a good job. Many teachers also live in accommodation unsuited to having a home office to work from.
Well said: getting students to engage online became increasingly difficult as the lockdown went on. Teaching in person is so much more effective.
Thanks to @ydoethur for the abrupt reminder that people who who phone in probably aren't representative.
More generally, I do get frustrated with those (even a minority) who refuse to ever go into the office or classroom again, as other public servants in the NHS put themselves at risk every day.
That's not to mention the min-wage private sector who have been exposed throughout, and were the ones keeping the country going.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
People equipped with a little knowledge, but are so cocksure of their interpretation of that little knowledge need to locked in a darkened room until the end of the pandemic.
What scientific evidence do you have that Omicron " is mainly a mild cold"? People making such assertions are potentially very dangerous.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
An understandable reluctance to let go when we've been suppressing the disease, to various degrees, for a long time - coupled with the uncertainty over the extent of any pressure that will build on the hospitals.
Government may let go either if it's satisfied that letting Omicron take its course won't significantly worsen the already parlous state of the health service, or if forced to do so by critical levels of self-isolation in the workforce.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
People equipped with a little knowledge, but are so cocksure of their interpretation of that little knowledge need to locked in a darkened room until the end of the pandemic.
What scientific evidence do you have that Omicron " is mainly a mild cold"? People making such assertions are potentially very dangerous.
It's certainly milder, as shown in a number of papers and, I suggest, the latest data. But it's not common cold mild.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
Kate McCann of Sky even admitting omicron looks more like a cold and suggesting the 7 day period of isolation to 5 may come about
Just switched it on a few minutes ago and she even mentioned the possibility of abolishing the isolation period altogether.
Its only a matter of time now. When I first said it a couple of weeks ago certain individuals acted as if I'd just suggested necrophilia, but in just a couple of weeks it seems the conversation has moved on in a sensible direction so rapidly that this is now being seriously mooted.
Well, the logic is this;
1) This variant is so infectious nothing short of a full lockdown will stop it.
2) If we do still try measures short of that, notably isolation, we will shut down vast sectors of society and the economy due to isolation but get bugger all reward.
3) In any case, this variant seems much less serious, particularly to those who have been vaccinated, which is almost everyone who is vulnerable.
4) Therefore, why bother to start with?
Whether it's the right or wrong answer you have to admit there is a certain logic to it.
The other point is the quicker that Omicron replaces Delta the better so the best idea may be to let it spread as quickly as possible.
But if weak measures work against Delta but not Omicron, then it still might make sense to have a few measures. depending on how much Delta is still around. Actually, if Omicron is spreading through vaccinated people and Delta not so much, then the kind of restrictions on the unvaccinated that some countries have should have that effect of spreading Omicron and suppressing Delta... In practice the unvaccinated, being generally a bit arsey, might just get together in private homes, and all give each other Delta because they aren't meeeting with the Omicron-infected vaccinated people.
OK, can we just knock this one on the head. We were told the information we were getting from South Africa was being "over-interpreted". It wasn't being "over-interpreted". It was an accurate reflection of how the Omicron wave was significantly different to Delta.
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I said on here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
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...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
Perhaps that other endemic virus known as Hangover?
If only! As I was driver to my frail (frankly that doesn't cover just how buggered they both look now) parents I didn't touch a drop.
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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
No I'm not and I traveled quite a bit during the pandemic, but there is a difference re appearances. If Boris (unlike the rest of us) did take an exotic trip he would be slaughter in the press and if you don't realise that you are even more out of touch than you appear.
No he won't now as Boris has correctly refused to impose any new restrictions over Christmas and New Year. Had he done so like Sturgeon and Drakeford he might have been but he hasn't and the nightclubs, pubs, bars and restaurants and cinemas and theatres are all open in England and there are no travel bans either.
Boris is now also correctly taking a stand as Conservatives begin an ideological battle with statist left liberals to keep us open while they want to shut us down again.
There was general across the board political agreement with lockdown and Covid restrictions pre vaccination. Now post vaccination and boosters the divide is now clear, Boris and Conservatives and indeed RefUK to keep us open v Labour and the SNP to keep us restricted and shut down
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
People equipped with a little knowledge, but are so cocksure of their interpretation of that little knowledge need to locked in a darkened room until the end of the pandemic.
What scientific evidence do you have that Omicron " is mainly a mild cold"? People making such assertions are potentially very dangerous.
All the evidence is pointing in the direction of it being a mild illness.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Quite right. If we stop testing then the pandemic is over. Don't Look Up!
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
Of course it would. Just because something isn't banned you still lead by example and the message is enjoy yourself but be careful and be restrained. That wouldn't be. It would be a kick in the teeth for those not risking a modest trip to the Costas.
Wrong. The travel industry needs more people to book trips to the Costas, especially once they have had their boosters.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
How many people working in the Costa tourist industry pay tax in the UK?
Lots of people working at Heathrow, Gatwick for BA, Virgin, Ryanair, Easyjet etc pay tax in the UK and Conservatives ate standing up for them
The smears and slurs on Dr Angelique Coetzee were colonial attitudes at their worst. As I had here repeatedly at the time.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
I agree, but I also think it was wise to get some UK data before making a call either way. They complement each other.
Burden of proof of new restrictions, so all worked out in the end.
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...
I hope it is negative! We also did the big (well 11, big for us) family gathering and I spent the last two days feeling RAF. But keep testing negative so not Covid.
Perhaps that other endemic virus known as Hangover?
If only! As I was driver to my frail (frankly that doesn't cover just how buggered they both look now) parents I didn't touch a drop.
I sympathise: I’ve been doing all the driving over the last few days too.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
People equipped with a little knowledge, but are so cocksure of their interpretation of that little knowledge need to locked in a darkened room until the end of the pandemic.
What scientific evidence do you have that Omicron " is mainly a mild cold"? People making such assertions are potentially very dangerous.
There's plenty of evidence its mainly a cold, especially for the vaccinated, but I wouldn't say its a mild cold necessarily.
The fact that millions of people have it, but only a few hundreds/thousands are getting hospitalised, really shows that for most people it is just a cold.
The primary symptoms now according to scientific evidence like Zoe etc is a runny nose etc . . . up to you whether you want to call a runny nose etc a cold.
For a small minority of people it can be much more serious than a cold and of course a small proportion of a very large number can be a decent sized number.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
And yet the symptoms of the 10 people they may have otherwise infected may not have been so mild.
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?
I did that to my daughter's beaker about 30 years ago. We sometimes go a whole week without it being brought up!
Thanks to @ydoethur for the abrupt reminder that people who who phone in probably aren't representative.
More generally, I do get frustrated with those (even a minority) who refuse to ever go into the office or classroom again, as other public servants in the NHS put themselves at risk every day.
That's not to mention the min-wage private sector who have been exposed throughout, and were the ones keeping the country going.
Why do they frustrate you, unless they're obnoxious about it? Some of us find working from home preferable and think we're more productive that way than crouched in a row of desks. My colleagues are scattered around the country so I'd only see some of them anyway. I appreciate that most jobs are different and that some people really hate wfh, so I'm not urging you to do it, but I don't see that I'm doing you any harm by doing it myself.
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.
As a former PBer should be, he is good on the issue of personal appetite for risk.
I am (nearly) 57 and have a congenital heart defect that may make me higher risk. My friends are mostly a similar age, some are older (one guy who was in the pub on Christmas Ever is 80) many are overweight and some have health conditions themselves. We have all been triple-jabbed and some of us have had, and thrown off, COVID. We are all happy to expose ourselves to the risk of catching Omicron, have been out and about at pubs, parties and restaurants in the last few weeks. Recklessness? No, we just judge the increased level of risk to be manageable. Something is going to get you, one day - when COVID is reduced in risk to just one of those things, then we can start living lives normally.
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.
He had a disagreement with another poster. I can't remember who it was.
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
The Uk is somewhere in the middle
Cumulative per capita Covid deaths per million (source: ourworldindata)
I've listed a selection. We may anticipate that some states, e.g. the Russians, are under-reporting, but it should be fairly accurate for most developed nations:
Peru: 6,071 Hungary: 4,021 Romania: 3,062 Brazil: 2,892 Poland: 2,497 United States: 2,458 Belgium: 2,426 Italy: 2,265 United Kingdom: 2,172 Russia: 2,050 EU average: 2,003 Spain: 1,907 France: 1,820 South Africa: 1,513 Germany: 1,321 Netherlands: 1,211 Canada: 794 Denmark: 553 Australia: 85 New Zealand: 10
Thus we're doing a little worse than the EU average, a little better than the Americans, Belgians and Italians, a little worse than the French and Spanish, and substantially worse than the Germans, Dutch and Canadians. The UK's performance in terms of Covid deaths might be summarised as fairly poor, but not a huge outlier from its peer group. There are plenty of nations for whom suppression hasn't worked terribly well, through poor application laced with varying degrees of bad luck.
We'll probably end up better than the EU average once the Omicron wave is all done. France and Spain are likely to overtake us, as they have similar 1st and 2nd dose vaccination rates, are quite a way behind on boosters, and have less natural immunity from infections. We might already be ahead of the EU average, if you adjusted for demographics and co-morbidities.
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
75% of Covid patients being incidental admissions doesn’t mean 75% of patients are infected. If the rate of hospitalisation due to Covid is low enough (and I don’t know the numbers) then you could get the incidental rate quoted.
If 3/67ths of patients are admitted with incidental Covid and 1/67th are admitted due to Covid, then the maths works.
Yes I've made a Bayes error mixing patients with incidental Covid and Covid patients being incidental.
Still not convinced about the Tele's methodology though - for one thing they've used 6,245 beds occupied on Dec 21st when the figure is 6,902. No idea where they have the "45 admitted because of the virus" and "remaining 245 in hospital for other conditions but also having tested positive - so called 'incidental Covid' admissions" numbers from too.
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
We've currently got about 160k hospital beds total in this country, and 8k are occupied by people with Covid. So if between 140k and 160k beds are full right now and 20% are there specifically for Covid reasons, then that implies about 4-4.5% of the non-Covid admissions also have Covid, which is bang in line with your 3/67 estimate.
With the age profile of the cases you'd expect it to skew lower than the general prevalence as compared to the delta wave which was much, much higher. Hospital is a very very high testing enviroment, so ONS rather than known cases is the best for this, I'll try and take a look.
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Several friends have been locked indoors when there is absolutely nothing wrong with them. Mild symptoms clearing after 48 hours in many cases.
And yet the symptoms of the 10 people they may have otherwise infected may not have been so mild.
Indeed, although on the balance of risk said infections are likely to be mild. As the data shows.
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).
The kidneys, liver and gut are not upper respiratory either…
The point is if the virus is embedded enough to cause fatal issues in these organs it will also have got to the lungs.
If Omni kills without impacting the lungs (and there is no evidence it does) then we are in a similar position to one of the actresses on niche websites that @TheScreamingEagles watches
As Omicron is so mild within our population is there any point to the huge testing regime that we are doing each day? We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
Quite right. If we stop testing then the pandemic is over. Don't Look Up!
The pandemic is now actually endemic whether we test or not.
If we were conducting millions of daily common cold tests that could detect all strains of common cold then we'd be detecting hundreds of thousands of daily infections for that, but we quite sensibly don't do that.
As Covid19 joins other coronaviruses and rhinoviruses that are endemic we need to accept what we can and can't change about that.
Comments
Although Mr Cox managed it from a similar location. Lots of Union flags should do the trick.
If Labour had spent half the money the Tories had people would be calling for their heads
Sinopharm is certainly safe and effective against Covid-19 infections and serious illness.
Even Coronvac is much better than nothing, although apparently significantly less effective than many other vaccines.
Debate over BREXIT got so heated, that he was involved with, got so heated that he didn't want to be here anymore.
I might well ask him again.
I don't what, if anything he proposes to do for boosters.
He and his family, over here for the 'holidays, still test every two days.
All you are doing is pushing another nail in the coffin of our airline and travel industry and putting more workers from that industry out of work
To say that people on here were not dismissing this data and my posts is not particularly intelligent of you.
(It might blow itself out, but that isn't in our gift).
So I agree, as usual with Mr Meeks. Except that he overestimates the role of government, which is bound to be useless in the area of communications, and underestimates the roles of ordinary individuals to use their judgement, and the role of the NHS/public health to turn this into another fairly depoliticised recurring health management issue.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/2021/12/29/what-is-the-new-uae-approved-sinopharm-vaccine-and-how-does-it-work/
The history of medicine is full of mistakes and wrong answers caused by personal experience being used instead of scientific research.
Has anyone ever seen Boris and Bungle in the same room?
'where have you been the last 10 days'
Boris
'In this country'
Quite funny really
The far left loon would probably have spent the same amount if we didn't have a pandemic.
Which was very, very tough for them.
ETA - I would point out though that the restrictions we had to work under in schools last year were in many cases just as intolerable.
Can I ask a silly question - why do the 2 options in the chart not add up to 100%? It seems to be a 2 option Yes/No question, so according to me it should do that.
If 3/67ths of patients are admitted with incidental Covid and 1/67th are admitted due to Covid, then the maths works.
They certainly appear at the very least to be quite sanguine about a return to measures that supposedly make their members miserable. Hmmm...
Its only a matter of time now. When I first said it a couple of weeks ago certain individuals acted as if I'd just suggested necrophilia, but in just a couple of weeks it seems the conversation has moved on in a sensible direction so rapidly that this is now being seriously mooted.
No, wait, I meant put a sock in it.
No, wait... never mind.
And just for Barti Ddu, a 10/10 for not spending Christmas in the W. Indies.
So a lowish, but not very low, overround.
I am guessing the method of counting in different countries is probably not exactly the same in that chart.
We are making hundreds of thousand of people isolate for 7 days for what is mainly a mild cold.
1) This variant is so infectious nothing short of a full lockdown will stop it.
2) If we do still try measures short of that, notably isolation, we will shut down vast sectors of society and the economy due to isolation but get bugger all reward.
3) In any case, this variant seems much less serious, particularly to those who have been vaccinated, which is almost everyone who is vulnerable.
4) Therefore, why bother to start with?
Whether it's the right or wrong answer you have to admit there is a certain logic to it.
We don't have a Parliament full of Tories and Labourites despite the majority of the electorate being eco-anarchists. Because, of course, they aren't.
With ICU capacity - some countries count physical equipment. Some countries count physical equipment with dedicated staff. Some countries count dedicated staff, but not the actual equipment. Some countries count potential staff and actual equipment. Some countries count dedicated staff, actual equipment and emergency use equipment that is supposed to be in storage........ Some countries count the number of weird nose hairs the local dictator has. Or something.
How many teachers are furiously writing, calling, e-mailing their union reps with demands to keep the schools open vs those demanding remote working? People tend to complain about what is *not* happening *now*, rather than what *might* happen.
In many, many situations, the squeaky axle is the one that gets the grease.
The other point to make is that very little real thought has been given to how to protect teachers from Covid, partly because the government insists we are not at risk from it (although curiously, it has never attempted to collate figures to prove this, for some obscure reason). The unions are making a lot of noise precisely to draw attention to the fact that we are at risk, and we are doing a huge amount of work under very tough conditions to try and ameliorate the worst effects, often at vast cost to ourselves. And somebody needs to. Look at the abuse frequently heaped on teachers on this very board.
The fact that they have chosen the wrong targets is very frustrating and like I say I am exploring my options to hammer home that reality to them. Equally, they are trying to ask for things the DfE, which is full of people who would be placed last in an intelligence test where they competed solely against newborns, might be willing to grant.
Their worst failure, bluntly, has been not to explore the alternatives - heat curtains, air scrubbers etc. - and put forward meaningful proposals. And unfortunately those of us actually working have had little time to do anything on our own account because of the formidable workload we've had.
Anyway - to work. Later.
More generally, I do get frustrated with those (even a minority) who refuse to ever go into the office or classroom again, as other public servants in the NHS put themselves at risk every day.
That's not to mention the min-wage private sector who have been exposed throughout, and were the ones keeping the country going.
What scientific evidence do you have that Omicron " is mainly a mild cold"? People making such assertions are potentially very dangerous.
Funny old world.
Government may let go either if it's satisfied that letting Omicron take its course won't significantly worsen the already parlous state of the health service, or if forced to do so by critical levels of self-isolation in the workforce.
Let's try for some nuance.
In practice the unvaccinated, being generally a bit arsey, might just get together in private homes, and all give each other Delta because they aren't meeeting with the Omicron-infected vaccinated people.
OK, can we just knock this one on the head. We were told the information we were getting from South Africa was being "over-interpreted". It wasn't being "over-interpreted". It was an accurate reflection of how the Omicron wave was significantly different to Delta.
All credit to @NerysHughes on here by the way - he has been proved absolutely right despite the usual unthinking slurry being thrown his way by the lockdown hawks on PB.
Another anecdote: Short - term shoulder pain as a Covid symptom in a couple of people. Never heard that one before.
Boris is now also correctly taking a stand as Conservatives begin an ideological battle with statist left liberals to keep us open while they want to shut us down again.
There was general across the board political agreement with lockdown and Covid restrictions pre vaccination. Now post vaccination and boosters the divide is now clear, Boris and Conservatives and indeed RefUK to keep us open v Labour and the SNP to keep us restricted and shut down
Burden of proof of new restrictions, so all worked out in the end.
The fact that millions of people have it, but only a few hundreds/thousands are getting hospitalised, really shows that for most people it is just a cold.
The primary symptoms now according to scientific evidence like Zoe etc is a runny nose etc . . . up to you whether you want to call a runny nose etc a cold.
For a small minority of people it can be much more serious than a cold and of course a small proportion of a very large number can be a decent sized number.
I am (nearly) 57 and have a congenital heart defect that may make me higher risk. My friends are mostly a similar age, some are older (one guy who was in the pub on Christmas Ever is 80) many are overweight and some have health conditions themselves. We have all been triple-jabbed and some of us have had, and thrown off, COVID. We are all happy to expose ourselves to the risk of catching Omicron, have been out and about at pubs, parties and restaurants in the last few weeks. Recklessness? No, we just judge the increased level of risk to be manageable. Something is going to get you, one day - when COVID is reduced in risk to just one of those things, then we can start living lives normally.
Thanks.
Thought it was a result of kipping for 15 hours straight!
Still not convinced about the Tele's methodology though - for one thing they've used 6,245 beds occupied on Dec 21st when the figure is 6,902. No idea where they have the "45 admitted because of the virus" and "remaining 245 in hospital for other conditions but also having tested positive - so called 'incidental Covid' admissions" numbers from too. With the age profile of the cases you'd expect it to skew lower than the general prevalence as compared to the delta wave which was much, much higher.
Hospital is a very very high testing enviroment, so ONS rather than known cases is the best for this, I'll try and take a look.
The point is if the virus is embedded enough to cause fatal issues in these organs it will also have got to the lungs.
If Omni kills without impacting the lungs (and there is no evidence it does) then we are in a similar position to one of the actresses on niche websites that @TheScreamingEagles watches
If we were conducting millions of daily common cold tests that could detect all strains of common cold then we'd be detecting hundreds of thousands of daily infections for that, but we quite sensibly don't do that.
As Covid19 joins other coronaviruses and rhinoviruses that are endemic we need to accept what we can and can't change about that.