We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the measures taken by the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Governments have done any good at all. If they have, there really ought to be some marked divergence in the case rates during the first half of January, so we don't have long to wait to find out.
theres also the phenomenom of lots of scots going south to england for nye which will distort the data as they bring covid back into scotland
The case rate in Scotland isn't very different to that in England, and I confidently predict that there will NOT be a mass exodus of revellers going South tomorrow night anyway. Some, sure, but not many thousands. The major Scottish population centres (unless you're going to take the word "major" with a hefty pinch of salt and count Dumfries) are all a long way from the border; you'd need to be a very determined party animal to want to make the trip just so you can have a drink standing up rather than sitting down.
NYE might be a superspreading event between households, but it won't make a jot of difference to the Scottish case rate in the manner that you describe.
Disclose.tv @disclosetv JUST IN - Netherlands plans to inject people with "up to six doses" of COVID vaccine - Health Minister (Newsweek)
I mean they've barely done third doses, what a joke.
They are doing Moderna, and aiui half dose boosters.
Do we do that for Moderna?
Same, half doses. You get a 37x multiplier for half doses 83x for full so the half dose was seen as fine. A full Pfizer dose gets a 29x multiplier iirc, so even the half dose of Moderna is a good option. There's been chatter that the next round could be quarter doses of Moderna and half doses of Pfizer.
1/4 Moderna or 1/2 Pfizer every 6-9 months might be the ticket.
Besides conserving doses for cost or supply purposes, what reason is there to only give a fractional dose instead of a full dose?
All drugs (including vaccines) are a trade off between side effects and efficacy.
As a general rule you want to give the minimum effective dose
What's the minimum effective dose of wine?
When the government came out with their "no more than 14 units a week" I took a look at the stats. In order to increase your chance of early death by 10% you would need to drink two bottles of wine a day
Now if the whole population started doing that the results would be catastrophic.....individually, on the other hand.....
The best and most constructive post in the history of PB. It is in line with the guidance you see on road signs in Scotland, "Twenty is Plenty," which I construe as a units per day limit.
You're going for the "Stopped Clock" award, aren't you?
Anyone calling for lockdown in this Omicron wave is essentially saying one or both of these:
1. The UK population is completely different from that of South Africa or Denmark in our susceptibility to severe disease from Omicron, or 2. The NHS in London is less able to manage an Omicron wave than the healthcare system in Johannesburg.
Either of which seems pretty unlikely.
1. the uk population is older and more obese than the SA population and less healthythan the danish population too 2. its the nhs.....mmmm
It truly will be a moment of truth if it turns out our public health system is less robust than that of a middle income country like South Africa.
On 1, yes we are older but comorbidities are a far bigger issue in S Africa and the country has one of the highest excess mortality rates of any in the world during the pandemic.
And the scientific evidence keeps mounting not just for lower severity leading to reduced hospitalisation, but much lower severity once hospitalised. In direct contrast to Delta.
Denmark about a week further into Omicron than us and 5 people in ICU with it in the entire country.
It will pass. I am feeling pretty optimistic because the data looks good and consistent. I don’t believe the UK is that different from elsewhere. We are all physiologically humans after all.
The Lib Dems must be grateful the voters of East Dunbartonshire got rid of the useless Swinson, and their party narrowly avoided the probably even worse Moran.
Can anyone who uses the word mojo have any mojo?
Mike Smithson - who used the word - is no spring chicken. But he still has a fair click of energy. Call it mojo.
Graham Medley @GrahamMedley · 38m You seem to be only focusing on the worst outcome. These are not predictions- they are “what-if” scenarios to help decision makers understand the potential outcomes of different policy choices
We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the measures taken by the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Governments have done any good at all. If they have, there really ought to be some marked divergence in the case rates during the first half of January, so we don't have long to wait to find out.
theres also the phenomenom of lots of scots going south to england for nye which will distort the data as they bring covid back into scotland
I can't see it myself. Carlisle has its attractions no doubt, but hardly party central 🤣
Seems much more likely across the Welsh border to be honest.
We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the measures taken by the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Governments have done any good at all. If they have, there really ought to be some marked divergence in the case rates during the first half of January, so we don't have long to wait to find out.
theres also the phenomenom of lots of scots going south to england for nye which will distort the data as they bring covid back into scotland
I can't see it myself. Carlisle has its attractions no doubt, but hardly party central 🤣
- ”… there are many constituencies where that level of anti-CON tactical voting could be decisive.”
Especially in Scotland.
All 6 Scottish Conservative seats (5 after boundary changes) are susceptible to even modest anti-CON tactical voting.
I don't see anyway the Tories have any Scottish seats at the next election/
What if more people vote for them in a Scottish constituency than any of their opponents?
I could see them winning a seat under that scenario.
(Non facetiously, I think they'll win the border seats again.)
My current prediction is they'll win 2 in Scotland. The anti-Johnson tide will be somewhat held back by anti-SNP tactical voting. When it comes down to it some people who hate both Johnson and the SNP will stick with Johnson as the lesser of two weevils.
The anti-Tory vote was squezzed pretty much as far as possible in 2019 so i don't see much scope for further anti tory voting knocking off any of their seats.
What the SCons have to worry about, in my view, is former Lib Dem voters who flocked to them en-masse in 2017 "returning home".
Now, i think that is fairly unlikely as anti-SNP is driving their vote and the SNP will still exist at the next election but the LD-to-SCon vote unwinding would be devastating for the SCons.
The 2019 Con vote in Scotland was 10pp up on 2015. Ten! There's a LOT of scope for people to turn back away, and I think they will. Simply, there's a set of people who hate the SNP and saw the Conservatives as the best party to express that. What will happen to those voters? Doubtless significant numbers will stay, but if we call 15% the Tory "base", are conditions more or less favourable now then in 2019 for keeping the "extra" ten? I'm certain they are less favourable.
If, for example, CON goes from 25% to 20%, that will see my seat fall to the SNP even with no extra SNP votes.
Disclose.tv @disclosetv JUST IN - Netherlands plans to inject people with "up to six doses" of COVID vaccine - Health Minister (Newsweek)
I mean they've barely done third doses, what a joke.
They are doing Moderna, and aiui half dose boosters.
Do we do that for Moderna?
Same, half doses. You get a 37x multiplier for half doses 83x for full so the half dose was seen as fine. A full Pfizer dose gets a 29x multiplier iirc, so even the half dose of Moderna is a good option. There's been chatter that the next round could be quarter doses of Moderna and half doses of Pfizer.
1/4 Moderna or 1/2 Pfizer every 6-9 months might be the ticket.
Besides conserving doses for cost or supply purposes, what reason is there to only give a fractional dose instead of a full dose?
All drugs (including vaccines) are a trade off between side effects and efficacy.
As a general rule you want to give the minimum effective dose
What's the minimum effective dose of wine?
When the government came out with their "no more than 14 units a week" I took a look at the stats. In order to increase your chance of early death by 10% you would need to drink two bottles of wine a day
Now if the whole population started doing that the results would be catastrophic.....individually, on the other hand.....
The best and most constructive post in the history of PB. It is in line with the guidance you see on road signs in Scotland, "Twenty is Plenty," which I construe as a units per day limit.
10% is quite a lot n'est-ce pas?
Not really, your chance of an early death is quite small to start with.
A friend tells a story of when he was a DoH civil servant, working in Whitehall. This was when they were first giving out advice on how many "units" you should drink. So they gathered a panel of eminent doctors in a room and asked them.
They'd never thought about it. One said, "a bottle of wine a day is fine, that's what I have with dinner". They concurred.
What's that in units? 42. Bugger, seems a bit high, better halve it for hoi polloi.
(I think wine was weaker then, a bottle at 14% and I go to bed quite mellow).
Like the scary headliners from the WHO about eating bacon leading to a 20% increase in chances of getting colorectal cancer. Yes, a lifetime risk of 5% vs 4.3% if you never ate processed meat.
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
Also it's the university of Coventry, look on a map. Like Cambridge calling itself Saffron Walden university - which would make more sense, to avoid confusion with the genuinely prestigious place in Cambridge, Mass.
You can lock down if you want to, all a lockdown would do now is move my NYE celebration from the pub to a few bottles round a mate's house. And every other event in my social calendar for next month, for that matter.
It's all very well saying "lockdown now" but how much compliance do you honestly think you are going to get from the triple jabbed who are f***** sick of it all now and just want to get on with life.
That, and it probably wouldn't work anyway.
Omicron is both very widespread everywhere in the country and hugely infectious. It doesn't matter if the Government closes gyms and restaurants. More than half the working population has to go to a physical workplace and nearly all of us have to use essential shops. Should be more than enough to ensure that it keeps scything its way through the population.
- ”… there are many constituencies where that level of anti-CON tactical voting could be decisive.”
Especially in Scotland.
All 6 Scottish Conservative seats (5 after boundary changes) are susceptible to even modest anti-CON tactical voting.
I don't see anyway the Tories have any Scottish seats at the next election/
What if more people vote for them in a Scottish constituency than any of their opponents?
I could see them winning a seat under that scenario.
(Non facetiously, I think they'll win the border seats again.)
My current prediction is they'll win 2 in Scotland. The anti-Johnson tide will be somewhat held back by anti-SNP tactical voting. When it comes down to it some people who hate both Johnson and the SNP will stick with Johnson as the lesser of two weevils.
The anti-Tory vote was squezzed pretty much as far as possible in 2019 so i don't see much scope for further anti tory voting knocking off any of their seats.
What the SCons have to worry about, in my view, is former Lib Dem voters who flocked to them en-masse in 2017 "returning home".
Now, i think that is fairly unlikely as anti-SNP is driving their vote and the SNP will still exist at the next election but the LD-to-SCon vote unwinding would be devastating for the SCons.
Ironically, it's the SNP's strength which is likely holding the SCONS up. If SLAB did ever make any substantial progress against the SNP - both in terms of vote share and seats - in urban Scotland, a lot of SLD voters would probably consider it to be safe to go home. No need to prop up SCON MPs in say BRS if the SNP aren't a credible threat to the union.
We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the measures taken by the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Governments have done any good at all. If they have, there really ought to be some marked divergence in the case rates during the first half of January, so we don't have long to wait to find out.
theres also the phenomenom of lots of scots going south to england for nye which will distort the data as they bring covid back into scotland
I can't see it myself. Carlisle has its attractions no doubt, but hardly party central 🤣
Seems much more likely across the Welsh border to be honest.
Travel from the UK to France Travel Update for those transiting through France
The French government has updated the travel rules applied since 28 December 2021.
Passengers travelling from the UK, with residency permits for other EU countries under the Withdrawal Agreement, can now transit through France to return to their homes. This is subject to their journey to the UK having been completed before the 28th December 2021.
I believe it was illegal under Schengen and they had no choice but to reverse their decision
Yes.
Even Comical Dave was arguing that.
Likely Brussels or Germany had a quiet word, and told panto-prezza to pipe down, just as they did when illegal threats were being made over the UK refusing to breach the FTA agreement with fish.
He now needs to explain how the UK boosted France's COVID case figures whilst the border was blocked.
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
What does it predict for the days for which we already have data - yesterday etc.?
Who cares? The Warwick models are so notoriously bad that, even if they got somewhere remotely close to being right about the shape of the Omicron wave at this juncture, it could easily be dismissed as a stopped clock event.
Any one of us could probably come up with a better guess if given a day to trawl Google for some basic numbers and do a few sums.
How the fuck do they get to 1.5 million new infections a day? Are they assuming an unlimited naive population?
I think around 2.5-5 million total infections in the omicron wave is more like it, not 1.5 million a day.
I think the modelling work was done over a week ago (when it looked theoretically plausible), and has taken a while to get written up, reviewed and published. All I can infer is that there is more to be gained in academia from publishing something, than there is to lose from publishing utter nonsense.
That, or there is genuinely a conspiracy to try and bounce the Government into lockdown and they hope no-one looks too closely at the results.
I'll say it again, death penalty for these utter Michael Masis.
Police have arrested a man after a group of Covid deniers stormed a hospital and accused staff of “aiding and abetting genocide” as they tried to remove an elderly patient.
Video shared on social media showed a group entering the University Hospital Aintree in Liverpool before confronting nurses and accusing them of “kidnapping” the patient, who is understood to be receiving treatment on a Covid ward.
A man filming the incident is heard incorrectly ranting that Covid has been “downgraded to a non-infectious disease” and telling one nurse “you’ll be the first under open arrest” while referring to the group as “common law constables”.
At one point, he tells medical staff pleading with the group to leave that “you are all aiding and abetting genocide”.
Nurses and security staff joined efforts to ask the group to leave the ward after they entered the hospital at around 8.20pm last night before police arrived.
The patient being targeted is said to be the father of one of the men in the group. At one point, the man filming accuses hospital staff of having “murdered” the patient’s wife. He then bizarrely claims Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson have been arrested.
A nurse is heard telling police officers that the patient’s son’s mother had died of Covid, adding: “But he doesn’t believe in Covid. Since then we have had multiple threats from them that he was going to come to the ward and remove his dad.”
Merseyside Police confirmed that officers were called to the hospital following reports of a disturbance on a ward.
You can lock down if you want to, all a lockdown would do now is move my NYE celebration from the pub to a few bottles round a mate's house. And every other event in my social calendar for next month, for that matter.
It's all very well saying "lockdown now" but how much compliance do you honestly think you are going to get from the triple jabbed who are f***** sick of it all now and just want to get on with life.
That, and it probably wouldn't work anyway.
Omicron is both very widespread everywhere in the country and hugely infectious. It doesn't matter if the Government closes gyms and restaurants. More than half the working population has to go to a physical workplace and nearly all of us have to use essential shops. Should be more than enough to ensure that it keeps scything its way through the population.
Yes, agree, I made a similar point yesterday, that it would be pretty much impossible now to get R under 1 in a way that's compatible with our democracy.
For it to work, you'd need a weld people into their apartments style lockdown, with police or armed forces patrolling the streets and suppressing protest. Any party that tried that would find themselves on -50 in the polls within weeks, and their leadership would be replaced in short order. Boris is already on thin ice.
(Earlier in December, we got in all the food we'd need for Christmas dinner if we didn't go to my parents due to Covid or lockdown. We did go, so it all needed eating up.)
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
Great post Richard.
I’m afraid I said it was far too early to say we were out of the woods. And it looks like the modellers should maybe be owed an apology.
NHS England have reported 365 new Covid hospital deaths over the period 25-30th Dec.. These I think will be added to today's 4pm http://gov.uk number so I expect lots of noise on here about the high death number.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I think if there were a market available I would be backing lockdown in the next 10 days at evens or better.
Note to all the big brave swinging dicks out there who are so well 'ard they go to the pub: this is what I think, not hope, will happen.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
I am not convinced that recent lib dem success in by elections is to translate in to anything like a national resurgence. They just seem like an opportunistic protest party that struggles to put across any real vision in general elections. The disappointment of the coalition post 2010, particularly in terms of their support for austerity and tuition fees, hit young voters badly and will probably take something like 50 years to fully recede.
NHS England have reported 365 new Covid hospital deaths over the period 25-30th Dec.. These I think will be added to today's 4pm http://gov.uk number so I expect lots of noise on here about the high death number.
Fill that "hole" to match the existing slope etc.....
What kind of background music should we play at the panic, this evening? @MoonRabbit ?
I am thinking that the biscuits should be simple Hobnob for a change.
Seriously! When i am in a nite spot on Friday will they play Radiohead? We are not there to gaze at shoes! Admittedly I do spend a lot of time looking at people’s shoes, so maybe I am.
Honestly! Proper music has a beat. You can sing along. And enjoy yourself.
This
1..RAINBOW - ALL NIGHT LONG 2..UNDERTONES - TEENAGE KICKS 3..BLACK SABBATH - PARANOID 4..DEEP PURPLE - SMOKE ON THE WATER 5..LED ZEPPELIN - WHOLE LOTTA LOVE 6..BLONDIE - HEART OF GLASS. 7..JIMI HENDRIX - HEY JOE 8..THE THE - THIS IS THE DAY 9..THE WEDDING PRESENT - THIS IS MY FAVOURITE DRESS 10..THE JAM - TUBE STATION AT MIDNIGHT 11..BUZZCOCKS - EVER FALLEN IN LOVE 12..X-RAY SPEX - GERMFREE ADOLESCENTS 13..ROLLING STONES - SATISFACTION 14..JOY DIVISION - TRANSMISSION 15..QUEEN - WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS 16..THE WHO - PINBALL WIZZARD 17.. THE KINKS - AUTUMN ALMANAC 18..MOTORHEAD - ACE OF SPADES 19..ELVIS PRESLEY - IF I CAN DREAM 20..BEATLES - HELP
Biscuits. We just bought treacle sponge hobnobs. Why not? Still Christmas.
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
What does it predict for the days for which we already have data - yesterday etc.?
Who cares? The Warwick models are so notoriously bad that, even if they got somewhere remotely close to being right about the shape of the Omicron wave at this juncture, it could easily be dismissed as a stopped clock event.
Any one of us could probably come up with a better guess if given a day to trawl Google for some basic numbers and do a few sums.
How the fuck do they get to 1.5 million new infections a day? Are they assuming an unlimited naive population?
I think around 2.5-5 million total infections in the omicron wave is more like it, not 1.5 million a day.
I think the modelling work was done over a week ago (when it looked theoretically plausible), and has taken a while to get written up, reviewed and published. All I can infer is that there is more to be gained in academia from publishing something, than there is to lose from publishing utter nonsense.
That, or there is genuinely a conspiracy to try and bounce the Government into lockdown and they hope no-one looks too closely at the results.
There has, since academic promotions became linked to numbers of published papers, a marked change in the nature of published papers - more frequent papers incrementally updating larger ongoing studies, rather than one paper analyzing the data once it was all in.
I wonder how many papers Dr Doll would have got out of his research into the link between smoking and lung cancer if he were a researcher now. Or even if he'd ever have concluded his seminal study.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I'm wondering how the the LSHTM model took incidental admissions into account. On the one hand, they're hugely important, because they show up in the daily figures which are how decisions are made, but on the other, they're not especially relevant because those individuals would have ended up in hospital anyway, so the only impact is them a) infecting other people in hospital and b) possibly they end up in hospital longer because they have Covid as well as [whatever else they had].
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
You can lock down if you want to, all a lockdown would do now is move my NYE celebration from the pub to a few bottles round a mate's house. And every other event in my social calendar for next month, for that matter.
It's all very well saying "lockdown now" but how much compliance do you honestly think you are going to get from the triple jabbed who are f***** sick of it all now and just want to get on with life.
That, and it probably wouldn't work anyway.
Omicron is both very widespread everywhere in the country and hugely infectious. It doesn't matter if the Government closes gyms and restaurants. More than half the working population has to go to a physical workplace and nearly all of us have to use essential shops. Should be more than enough to ensure that it keeps scything its way through the population.
Yes, agree, I made a similar point yesterday, that it would be pretty much impossible now to get R under 1 in a way that's compatible with our democracy.
For it to work, you'd need a weld people into their apartments style lockdown, with police or armed forces patrolling the streets and suppressing protest. Any party that tried that would find themselves on -50 in the polls within weeks, and their leadership would be replaced in short order. Boris is already on thin ice.
Hang on: Australia managed a lockdown to the extent of people not being allowed outside their apartments for weeks on end without (a) welding people in their homes or (b) abandoning democracy.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
The Germans said they are missing a out 3x cases due to very limited testing over Christmas period.
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
It really isn't, seeing as that's exactly what the German authorities themselves do seem to be claiming
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I'm wondering how the the LSHTM model took incidental admissions into account. On the one hand, they're hugely important, because they show up in the daily figures which are how decisions are made, but on the other, they're not especially relevant because those individuals would have ended up in hospital anyway, so the only impact is them a) infecting other people in hospital and b) possibly they end up in hospital longer because they have Covid as well as [whatever else they had].
Do we have that data for the UK?
Given the prevalence of Omnicron, there are presumably a *lot* of incidental admissions. The question is how many?
If we had data on total critical care bed usage that might give us a clue.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
Great post Richard.
I’m afraid I said it was far too early to say we were out of the woods. And it looks like the modellers should maybe be owed an apology.
Some of the models have been reasonably accurate through the pandemic. I don’t understand the obsessive rubbishing of them as if they are supposed to be oracular predictions.
Where they have tended to trip up has been in big updating quickly enough for new data, probably because of the process involved in making them. In the case of Omicron in assuming a too-long generation period, as well as not seeming to model behavioural changes. But they remain useful tools so long as they are not used for knee jerk policy decisions.
Disclose.tv @disclosetv JUST IN - Netherlands plans to inject people with "up to six doses" of COVID vaccine - Health Minister (Newsweek)
I mean they've barely done third doses, what a joke.
They are doing Moderna, and aiui half dose boosters.
Do we do that for Moderna?
Same, half doses. You get a 37x multiplier for half doses 83x for full so the half dose was seen as fine. A full Pfizer dose gets a 29x multiplier iirc, so even the half dose of Moderna is a good option. There's been chatter that the next round could be quarter doses of Moderna and half doses of Pfizer.
1/4 Moderna or 1/2 Pfizer every 6-9 months might be the ticket.
Besides conserving doses for cost or supply purposes, what reason is there to only give a fractional dose instead of a full dose?
All drugs (including vaccines) are a trade off between side effects and efficacy.
As a general rule you want to give the minimum effective dose
What's the minimum effective dose of wine?
When the government came out with their "no more than 14 units a week" I took a look at the stats. In order to increase your chance of early death by 10% you would need to drink two bottles of wine a day
Now if the whole population started doing that the results would be catastrophic.....individually, on the other hand.....
The best and most constructive post in the history of PB. It is in line with the guidance you see on road signs in Scotland, "Twenty is Plenty," which I construe as a units per day limit.
10% is quite a lot n'est-ce pas?
Not really, your chance of an early death is quite small to start with.
A friend tells a story of when he was a DoH civil servant, working in Whitehall. This was when they were first giving out advice on how many "units" you should drink. So they gathered a panel of eminent doctors in a room and asked them.
They'd never thought about it. One said, "a bottle of wine a day is fine, that's what I have with dinner". They concurred.
What's that in units? 42. Bugger, seems a bit high, better halve it for hoi polloi.
(I think wine was weaker then, a bottle at 14% and I go to bed quite mellow).
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
What does it predict for the days for which we already have data - yesterday etc.?
Who cares? The Warwick models are so notoriously bad that, even if they got somewhere remotely close to being right about the shape of the Omicron wave at this juncture, it could easily be dismissed as a stopped clock event.
Any one of us could probably come up with a better guess if given a day to trawl Google for some basic numbers and do a few sums.
How the fuck do they get to 1.5 million new infections a day? Are they assuming an unlimited naive population?
I think around 2.5-5 million total infections in the omicron wave is more like it, not 1.5 million a day.
I think the modelling work was done over a week ago (when it looked theoretically plausible), and has taken a while to get written up, reviewed and published. All I can infer is that there is more to be gained in academia from publishing something, than there is to lose from publishing utter nonsense.
That, or there is genuinely a conspiracy to try and bounce the Government into lockdown and they hope no-one looks too closely at the results.
There has, since academic promotions became linked to numbers of published papers, a marked change in the nature of published papers - more frequent papers incrementally updating larger ongoing studies, rather than one paper analyzing the data once it was all in.
I wonder how many papers Dr Doll would have got out of his research into the link between smoking and lung cancer if he were a researcher now. Or even if he'd ever have concluded his seminal study.
Not to mention having one's promotion now increasingly also tied to attracting external funding and grants. Which has obvious problems in that particular context - both from commerce and from HMG because of the tax take.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
It really isn't, seeing as that's exactly what the German authorities themselves do seem to be claiming
And they don’t test anywhere as much as us, or even France.
That said it’s pretty obvious that restrictions slow infection even with an extremely infectious virus. Of course they do. But it’s not a permanent reduction. It’s just a timing difference. People get infected a bit later.
We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
I would say I have not changed my mind on Boris who needs to go, but I do support HMG policy on England v Scotland Wales over reaction
As far as hospitalisations are concerned it is essential to have definitive information on just who is being hospitalised, and whether their admission is directly from omicron and not an accident or health issue that sees them test positive in hospital.
Furthermore the age and vaccination status together with the number in ICU is a legitimate information request
Those calling for lockdown need to define exactly what they mean by it and how long as I do believe the nation is turning against the imposition of further restrictions to people's freedoms
No one so far in the UK has gone anywhere near a March 2020/ January 2021 style lockdown, and few politicians are calling for it. Drakeford has blundered over Parkrun and you are correct to call the incompetent evil Socialist out for it. However, I do worry that Johnson's claimed Covid wisdom on this board may yet be premature, and his let's do nothing policy is out of hamstrung political expediency rather than his scientific genius.
I am often called out as a namby-pamby, lockdown-loving-Covid-quisling by Barti Ddu. It is true I am cautious, and wear a mask, but I was out and about working to earn a crust, and dodge the virus whilst he was banging away on his keyboard from the safety of working at home. I am happy to continue doing this, but I would rather early sensible precautions if they can in any way avoid anything like full lockdowns later.
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
Great post Richard.
I’m afraid I said it was far too early to say we were out of the woods. And it looks like the modellers should maybe be owed an apology.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
The Germans said they are missing a out 3x cases due to very limited testing over Christmas period.
I'm sure that's correct.
(And it's true of the UK, France, and a bunch of other places.)
But (a) the German positivity rate has actually come down in the last month and (b) the drop started earlier in Germany, coincident with the implementation of restrictions.
So, is the real German case count 25k? Nope. I bet it's at least 3 or 4x that. But I don't believe the real case count was just 80k three weeks ago (when Germany had a 20+% positivity rate.)
Germany has seen cases decline from their peak. Now, will that continue given Omicron? Probably not. But numbers have done better there (and the Netherlands) where there were severe restrictions than in some other countries.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I'm wondering how the the LSHTM model took incidental admissions into account. On the one hand, they're hugely important, because they show up in the daily figures which are how decisions are made, but on the other, they're not especially relevant because those individuals would have ended up in hospital anyway, so the only impact is them a) infecting other people in hospital and b) possibly they end up in hospital longer because they have Covid as well as [whatever else they had].
Do we have that data for the UK?
Given the prevalence of Omnicron, there are presumably a *lot* of incidental admissions. The question is how many?
If we had data on total critical care bed usage that might give us a clue.
The figures I saw earlier this week said it had gone up from ~40% to ~80% (ie 80% of total Covid hospitalisations are now not primarily for Covid), but I'm not sure how definitive that number is, or where I saw it. 80% is in line with roughly 5% of the country having Covid right now, which seems about right.
We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the measures taken by the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Governments have done any good at all. If they have, there really ought to be some marked divergence in the case rates during the first half of January, so we don't have long to wait to find out.
theres also the phenomenom of lots of scots going south to england for nye which will distort the data as they bring covid back into scotland
I can't see it myself. Carlisle has its attractions no doubt, but hardly party central 🤣
Indeed.
As they say, don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
It really isn't, seeing as that's exactly what the German authorities themselves do seem to be claiming
We’re going to get some form of additional lockdown measures next week, surely ?
Love to know what sort of lockdown will fix the baked in forthcoming increase in hospital numbers.
The PB hawks seem very satisfied with Johnson's performance over the last week, laughing heartily at Macron, Sturgeon and Drakeford. Surely politically Johnson has nailed his colours to Barti Ddu's mast, and the way forward can only be steady as she goes, and if needs must, let it rip.
Lockdown measures seem politically more unacceptable to the Conservative base and the voting public than NHS hospitalisations, and ultimately deaths.
It'll be interesting to see if any of the measures taken by the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scottish Governments have done any good at all. If they have, there really ought to be some marked divergence in the case rates during the first half of January, so we don't have long to wait to find out.
theres also the phenomenom of lots of scots going south to england for nye which will distort the data as they bring covid back into scotland
I can't see it myself. Carlisle has its attractions no doubt, but hardly party central 🤣
Indeed.
As they say, don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.
Or on PB.
Just trying to remember how many nightclubs Berwick has. One, I think, just before the high level bridge.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I'm wondering how the the LSHTM model took incidental admissions into account. On the one hand, they're hugely important, because they show up in the daily figures which are how decisions are made, but on the other, they're not especially relevant because those individuals would have ended up in hospital anyway, so the only impact is them a) infecting other people in hospital and b) possibly they end up in hospital longer because they have Covid as well as [whatever else they had].
Do we have that data for the UK?
Given the prevalence of Omnicron, there are presumably a *lot* of incidental admissions. The question is how many?
If we had data on total critical care bed usage that might give us a clue.
The figures I saw earlier this week said it had gone up from ~40% to ~80% (ie 80% of total Covid hospitalisations are now not primarily for Covid), but I'm not sure how definitive that number is, or where I saw it. 80% is in line with roughly 5% of the country having Covid right now, which seems about right.
Wow. Do you have a source for that? Because if true, it makes a massive difference to the correct policy response here.
I'll say it again, death penalty for these utter Michael Masis.
Police have arrested a man after a group of Covid deniers stormed a hospital and accused staff of “aiding and abetting genocide” as they tried to remove an elderly patient.
Video shared on social media showed a group entering the University Hospital Aintree in Liverpool before confronting nurses and accusing them of “kidnapping” the patient, who is understood to be receiving treatment on a Covid ward.
A man filming the incident is heard incorrectly ranting that Covid has been “downgraded to a non-infectious disease” and telling one nurse “you’ll be the first under open arrest” while referring to the group as “common law constables”.
At one point, he tells medical staff pleading with the group to leave that “you are all aiding and abetting genocide”.
Nurses and security staff joined efforts to ask the group to leave the ward after they entered the hospital at around 8.20pm last night before police arrived.
The patient being targeted is said to be the father of one of the men in the group. At one point, the man filming accuses hospital staff of having “murdered” the patient’s wife. He then bizarrely claims Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson have been arrested.
A nurse is heard telling police officers that the patient’s son’s mother had died of Covid, adding: “But he doesn’t believe in Covid. Since then we have had multiple threats from them that he was going to come to the ward and remove his dad.”
Merseyside Police confirmed that officers were called to the hospital following reports of a disturbance on a ward.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
The Germans said they are missing a out 3x cases due to very limited testing over Christmas period.
I'm sure that's correct.
(And it's true of the UK, France, and a bunch of other places.)
But (a) the German positivity rate has actually come down in the last month and (b) the drop started earlier in Germany, coincident with the implementation of restrictions.
So, is the real German case count 25k? Nope. I bet it's at least 3 or 4x that. But I don't believe the real case count was just 80k three weeks ago (when Germany had a 20+% positivity rate.)
Germany has seen cases decline from their peak. Now, will that continue given Omicron? Probably not. But numbers have done better there (and the Netherlands) where there were severe restrictions than in some other countries.
In terms of Germany vs UK testing specifically. We aren't talking the multipler of infections to cases, we are talking about the German testing system has bascially shut down for Christmas, where as UK one is running at max capacity despite Christmas.
I'll say it again, death penalty for these utter Michael Masis.
Police have arrested a man after a group of Covid deniers stormed a hospital and accused staff of “aiding and abetting genocide” as they tried to remove an elderly patient.
Video shared on social media showed a group entering the University Hospital Aintree in Liverpool before confronting nurses and accusing them of “kidnapping” the patient, who is understood to be receiving treatment on a Covid ward.
A man filming the incident is heard incorrectly ranting that Covid has been “downgraded to a non-infectious disease” and telling one nurse “you’ll be the first under open arrest” while referring to the group as “common law constables”.
At one point, he tells medical staff pleading with the group to leave that “you are all aiding and abetting genocide”.
Nurses and security staff joined efforts to ask the group to leave the ward after they entered the hospital at around 8.20pm last night before police arrived.
The patient being targeted is said to be the father of one of the men in the group. At one point, the man filming accuses hospital staff of having “murdered” the patient’s wife. He then bizarrely claims Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson have been arrested.
A nurse is heard telling police officers that the patient’s son’s mother had died of Covid, adding: “But he doesn’t believe in Covid. Since then we have had multiple threats from them that he was going to come to the ward and remove his dad.”
Merseyside Police confirmed that officers were called to the hospital following reports of a disturbance on a ward.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
Great post Richard.
I’m afraid I said it was far too early to say we were out of the woods. And it looks like the modellers should maybe be owed an apology.
Medley seems like he's just out-and-out lying in that first reply. It's the mean, not the worst case, and a projection of what would happen if we didn't implement any restrictions beyond Plan B. Which is what happened.
Edit: actually, maybe it's just that the graph is difficult to read. Looks like for 29 December, the mean is ~3-4k admissions and the top end of the confidence interval is 5k. Still, not inspiring me with confidence they've got this right.
Disclose.tv @disclosetv JUST IN - Netherlands plans to inject people with "up to six doses" of COVID vaccine - Health Minister (Newsweek)
I mean they've barely done third doses, what a joke.
They are doing Moderna, and aiui half dose boosters.
Do we do that for Moderna?
Same, half doses. You get a 37x multiplier for half doses 83x for full so the half dose was seen as fine. A full Pfizer dose gets a 29x multiplier iirc, so even the half dose of Moderna is a good option. There's been chatter that the next round could be quarter doses of Moderna and half doses of Pfizer.
1/4 Moderna or 1/2 Pfizer every 6-9 months might be the ticket.
Besides conserving doses for cost or supply purposes, what reason is there to only give a fractional dose instead of a full dose?
All drugs (including vaccines) are a trade off between side effects and efficacy.
As a general rule you want to give the minimum effective dose
What's the minimum effective dose of wine?
When the government came out with their "no more than 14 units a week" I took a look at the stats. In order to increase your chance of early death by 10% you would need to drink two bottles of wine a day
Now if the whole population started doing that the results would be catastrophic.....individually, on the other hand.....
The best and most constructive post in the history of PB. It is in line with the guidance you see on road signs in Scotland, "Twenty is Plenty," which I construe as a units per day limit.
10% is quite a lot n'est-ce pas?
Not really, your chance of an early death is quite small to start with.
A friend tells a story of when he was a DoH civil servant, working in Whitehall. This was when they were first giving out advice on how many "units" you should drink. So they gathered a panel of eminent doctors in a room and asked them.
They'd never thought about it. One said, "a bottle of wine a day is fine, that's what I have with dinner". They concurred.
What's that in units? 42. Bugger, seems a bit high, better halve it for hoi polloi.
(I think wine was weaker then, a bottle at 14% and I go to bed quite mellow).
My bro in law is a retired Northern Ireland GP and for decades was on call as a police surgeon. His advice (which he follows assiduously) is NO SPIRITS, otherwise just get on with it.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
It really isn't, seeing as that's exactly what the German authorities themselves do seem to be claiming
And they don’t test anywhere as much as us, or even France.
That said it’s pretty obvious that restrictions slow infection even with an extremely infectious virus. Of course they do. But it’s not a permanent reduction. It’s just a timing difference. People get infected a bit later.
That's not quite true.
Take a disease with a natural R of 3. With restrictions, you can reduce that to 1.
That means that without restrictions you'll end up at about 85% infected before herd immunity is reached (because you have a lot of people infected when you hit the theoretical level of herd immunuty). Imagine if you have half the country with Covid, and an R of 1. Well, then everyone in the country will end up getting Covid, because each person passes it to another person.
With restrictions you end up with the eventual number getting it being v. close to the herd immunity number.
New modelling from Warwick Uni projects 1.4 million infections, 5,000 hospital admissions and 500 deaths per day by Saturday, if we’re lucky. 🤷🏼♂️ https://t.co/rbQGJAHHAXhttps://t.co/CjHxGbz4n6
Them: Is there any other vaccine in history that required three doses in a year and yet still didn’t prevent transmission of the virus it was meant to protect against?
Me: Your childhood vaccinations would like a word with you.
I have a extended family member who is doing this already....
Cant you tell them too much testing causes COVID?
If you are testing yourself three times a day with LFT then you should speak to your GP. You are suffering from anxiety condition and it needs some input. Plus, you will likely damage your throat and nostrils.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
What percentage of those in hospital are unvaccinated or have not had their booster? Most of them. No Conservative Leader and PM would survive imposing more restrictions on the vaccinated.
The new ConservativeHome Tory members survey finds 35% want no new restrictions at all, 33% want only vaxports on the unvaccinated and 25% want just the restrictions we have now. Just 4% of Tory members want more restrictions on the vaccinated ie even smaller than the percentage of Tory members who wanted to stop Brexit
We're in for the ride. Actually, on the basis that decisions should be made on the information you have at the time, including where information is missing, and on the basis that early intervention is effective intervention, there was a good case for restrictions earlier. But there was no political appetite for restrictions and now it's almost too late for them to be effective.
So we'll see whether Omicron is better or worse than Delta in terms of hospitalisations. But there is a difference. This time we are choosing to have hospitalisations over restrictions. We fully locked down for Delta. We had no other remedies.
Mike you are spot on. And I think the reason is something I identified in 1992-7: hatred for the tories. It is so strong at the moment that Labour voters will do anything to boot them out and I think LibDems will do the same.
It's one of the reasons why I am certain the tories will be out of office.
Christopher Snowdon @cjsnowdon · 21m Replying to @cjsnowdon It must be very frustrating for clever academics to have to answer silly questions from the naive public.
If that is the case and they have their MOJO back they need to fight Southend West, as do Labour, otherwise their MOJO could stall amid a massive Reform Party vote. Suggest this issue is worth a thread on its won.
I agreee
I don’t agree. Assassinated when doing constituency work. It’s good manners to stand aside out of respect, and good principle not to look to gain from assassinated MP seat.
Dead wrong, the show must go on. You wanna show respect for Amess you can do it at the funeral. Thereafter you show respect for democracy.
I think I'm with you on this but it's agonising. Ultimately I think you can separate the man from the party. Amess, regrettably, is not around to contest the seat. Someone else is standing for the Conservatives. Will he or she be better than the possible alternatives who could have stood for other parties? That ought to be up to the voters to decide. If the voters think the best course of action is to replace the murdered MP with a new one from the same party, that is a noble choice but their choice.
The counter argument is that the voters chose a Tory at the last election. Death from natural causes happens and should result in a new election.
But after a murder it is important to demonstrate that the killer has had no impact on the composition of parliament
I doubt that the killer was remotely concerned with the composition of Parliament.
You can lock down if you want to, all a lockdown would do now is move my NYE celebration from the pub to a few bottles round a mate's house. And every other event in my social calendar for next month, for that matter.
It's all very well saying "lockdown now" but how much compliance do you honestly think you are going to get from the triple jabbed who are f***** sick of it all now and just want to get on with life.
That, and it probably wouldn't work anyway.
Omicron is both very widespread everywhere in the country and hugely infectious. It doesn't matter if the Government closes gyms and restaurants. More than half the working population has to go to a physical workplace and nearly all of us have to use essential shops. Should be more than enough to ensure that it keeps scything its way through the population.
Yes, agree, I made a similar point yesterday, that it would be pretty much impossible now to get R under 1 in a way that's compatible with our democracy.
For it to work, you'd need a weld people into their apartments style lockdown, with police or armed forces patrolling the streets and suppressing protest. Any party that tried that would find themselves on -50 in the polls within weeks, and their leadership would be replaced in short order. Boris is already on thin ice.
Hang on: Australia managed a lockdown to the extent of people not being allowed outside their apartments for weeks on end without (a) welding people in their homes or (b) abandoning democracy.
The previous situation was with delta, where you could manage noncompliance in a way that kept R under 1.You didn't need *everyone* to comply, you just needed the vast majority. My guess is omicron is so contagious that you'd have to resort to much more suppressive tactics to get R under 1. As in, clearing protesters off the street with riot gear and jailing anyone who breaks curfew, etc. And there will be a lot more noncompliance now.
I grudgingly put up with lockdown this time last year at the expense of my own health. Now, as I'm triple jabbed, you'd literally need to weld me in or throw me in jail to get me to comply. I can only speak for my own cohort of late twentysomething to late fortysomething friends, but the appetite for another lockdown is low.
I suspect there isn't much demographic crossover between my friends and the "stand up if you hate Boris" crowd at Ally Pally, but my guess is they're of a similar mind.
Now, if you're Boris, how do you propose keeping all of us locked up without a) draconian tactics not compatible with the norms of western democracy or b) falling so far behind in the polls your party replaces you?
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I'm wondering how the the LSHTM model took incidental admissions into account. On the one hand, they're hugely important, because they show up in the daily figures which are how decisions are made, but on the other, they're not especially relevant because those individuals would have ended up in hospital anyway, so the only impact is them a) infecting other people in hospital and b) possibly they end up in hospital longer because they have Covid as well as [whatever else they had].
Do we have that data for the UK?
Given the prevalence of Omnicron, there are presumably a *lot* of incidental admissions. The question is how many?
If we had data on total critical care bed usage that might give us a clue.
The figures I saw earlier this week said it had gone up from ~40% to ~80% (ie 80% of total Covid hospitalisations are now not primarily for Covid), but I'm not sure how definitive that number is, or where I saw it. 80% is in line with roughly 5% of the country having Covid right now, which seems about right.
Wow. Do you have a source for that? Because if true, it makes a massive difference to the correct policy response here.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
It really isn't, seeing as that's exactly what the German authorities themselves do seem to be claiming
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
In which country are the restrictions having an effect? France? Germany?
It's pretty hard to argue that restrictions didn't have an effect in Germany:
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
The Germans said they are missing a out 3x cases due to very limited testing over Christmas period.
I'm sure that's correct.
(And it's true of the UK, France, and a bunch of other places.)
But (a) the German positivity rate has actually come down in the last month and (b) the drop started earlier in Germany, coincident with the implementation of restrictions.
So, is the real German case count 25k? Nope. I bet it's at least 3 or 4x that. But I don't believe the real case count was just 80k three weeks ago (when Germany had a 20+% positivity rate.)
Germany has seen cases decline from their peak. Now, will that continue given Omicron? Probably not. But numbers have done better there (and the Netherlands) where there were severe restrictions than in some other countries.
The German death rate in recent weeks suggests they have been undercounting infections more than comparable countries.
Speaking of comparable countries the Belgium-Netherlands differences are very significant.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
I'm wondering how the the LSHTM model took incidental admissions into account. On the one hand, they're hugely important, because they show up in the daily figures which are how decisions are made, but on the other, they're not especially relevant because those individuals would have ended up in hospital anyway, so the only impact is them a) infecting other people in hospital and b) possibly they end up in hospital longer because they have Covid as well as [whatever else they had].
Do we have that data for the UK?
Given the prevalence of Omnicron, there are presumably a *lot* of incidental admissions. The question is how many?
If we had data on total critical care bed usage that might give us a clue.
The figures I saw earlier this week said it had gone up from ~40% to ~80% (ie 80% of total Covid hospitalisations are now not primarily for Covid), but I'm not sure how definitive that number is, or where I saw it. 80% is in line with roughly 5% of the country having Covid right now, which seems about right.
James Melville @JamesMelville · 5h Almost a third of recorded Covid hospital cases in England are patients being primarily treated for a non Covid health problem. These are the rising number of Covid ‘incidental admissions’.
Covid hospital-admission stats are looking pretty grim, in fact appreciably worse (or at least showing up slightly earlier) than the much-derided LSHTM model of mid-December.
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
What percentage of those in hospital are unvaccinated or have not had their booster? Most of them. No Conservative Leader would survive imposing more restrictions in the vaccinated
Unfortunately the Conservative Party has gone so batshit-crazy that you are probably right, even if it were unambiguously clear that restrictions would save many tens of thousands of lives and that the economic hit from restrictions would be less than the hit from letting rip. Luckily it looks as though the booster programme will save us from having to face that.
Comments
NYE might be a superspreading event between households, but it won't make a jot of difference to the Scottish case rate in the manner that you describe.
On 1, yes we are older but comorbidities are a far bigger issue in S Africa and the country has one of the highest excess mortality rates of any in the world during the pandemic.
And the scientific evidence keeps mounting not just for lower severity leading to reduced hospitalisation, but much lower severity once hospitalised. In direct contrast to Delta.
Denmark about a week further into Omicron than us and 5 people in ICU with it in the entire country.
It will pass. I am feeling pretty optimistic because the data looks good and consistent. I don’t believe the UK is that different from elsewhere. We are all physiologically humans after all.
Graham Medley
@GrahamMedley
·
38m
You seem to be only focusing on the worst outcome. These are not predictions- they are “what-if” scenarios to help decision makers understand the potential outcomes of different policy choices
Guess what? I am eating bacon whenever I want.
Omicron is both very widespread everywhere in the country and hugely infectious. It doesn't matter if the Government closes gyms and restaurants. More than half the working population has to go to a physical workplace and nearly all of us have to use essential shops. Should be more than enough to ensure that it keeps scything its way through the population.
Even Comical Dave was arguing that.
Likely Brussels or Germany had a quiet word, and told panto-prezza to pipe down, just as they did when illegal threats were being made over the UK refusing to breach the FTA agreement with fish.
He now needs to explain how the UK boosted France's COVID case figures whilst the border was blocked.
That, or there is genuinely a conspiracy to try and bounce the Government into lockdown and they hope no-one looks too closely at the results.
Police have arrested a man after a group of Covid deniers stormed a hospital and accused staff of “aiding and abetting genocide” as they tried to remove an elderly patient.
Video shared on social media showed a group entering the University Hospital Aintree in Liverpool before confronting nurses and accusing them of “kidnapping” the patient, who is understood to be receiving treatment on a Covid ward.
A man filming the incident is heard incorrectly ranting that Covid has been “downgraded to a non-infectious disease” and telling one nurse “you’ll be the first under open arrest” while referring to the group as “common law constables”.
At one point, he tells medical staff pleading with the group to leave that “you are all aiding and abetting genocide”.
Nurses and security staff joined efforts to ask the group to leave the ward after they entered the hospital at around 8.20pm last night before police arrived.
The patient being targeted is said to be the father of one of the men in the group. At one point, the man filming accuses hospital staff of having “murdered” the patient’s wife. He then bizarrely claims Chris Whitty and Boris Johnson have been arrested.
A nurse is heard telling police officers that the patient’s son’s mother had died of Covid, adding: “But he doesn’t believe in Covid. Since then we have had multiple threats from them that he was going to come to the ward and remove his dad.”
Merseyside Police confirmed that officers were called to the hospital following reports of a disturbance on a ward.
https://inews.co.uk/news/man-arrested-covid-deniers-storm-liverpool-hospital-genocide-1375082
For it to work, you'd need a weld people into their apartments style lockdown, with police or armed forces patrolling the streets and suppressing protest. Any party that tried that would find themselves on -50 in the polls within weeks, and their leadership would be replaced in short order. Boris is already on thin ice.
Mrs J did us proud.
I'm now in a food coma.
(Earlier in December, we got in all the food we'd need for Christmas dinner if we didn't go to my parents due to Covid or lockdown. We did go, so it all needed eating up.)
https://twitter.com/COVID19actuary/status/1476603552193724417/photo/3
Still, this isn't really a surprise. We knew that Omicron spreads super-fast, and the government took a deliberate decision not to impose tougher restrictions. I still think that was probably the right call, not least because by the time they got round to making a decision it was already too late for restrictions to have much effect.
Fortunately the triple-boosting looks as though it is working extremely well in avoiding too many of the most serious cases, and of course deaths, but the hit on the NHS is (as I expected) going to be dire over the next couple of weeks, and a lot of people are going to have a nasty bout of illness (albeit mainly the voluntarily unvaxxed).
What is clear is that the naïve takes on both extremes, ignoring the very real uncertainties and selectively picking snippets of data that supported their preconceptions, were equally irrational.
Or it could be a cold. See what a lateral flow test says in the morning.
I’m afraid I said it was far too early to say we were out of the woods. And it looks like the modellers should maybe be owed an apology.
If you’re not the sugar plum fairy, no.
We have about 30 because um reasons....
Note to all the big brave swinging dicks out there who are so well 'ard they go to the pub: this is what I think, not hope, will happen.
As an aside, are you going to withdraw your lie about Gibraltar?
Plus CHB would be calling him a Trot Anti Semite within seconds
I wonder how many papers Dr Doll would have got out of his research into the link between smoking and lung cancer if he were a researcher now. Or even if he'd ever have concluded his seminal study.
York and Warwick are Russell group the others less successful.
It has no legacy, it is the Paris Saint-Germain of universities, but without the money and Qataris.
More importantly, it is in Coventry.
https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-actual-covid-rate-2-or-3-times-higher-than-official-christmas-records/a-60287604
S
Given the prevalence of Omnicron, there are presumably a *lot* of incidental admissions. The question is how many?
If we had data on total critical care bed usage that might give us a clue.
Where they have tended to trip up has been in big updating quickly enough for new data, probably because of the process involved in making them. In the case of Omicron in assuming a too-long generation period, as well as not seeming to model behavioural changes. But they remain useful tools so long as they are not used for knee jerk policy decisions.
I just didn’t expect it to be a war between the UK and the EU on the very last day of the year
“What’s a safe drinking limit?”
“Less than your Doctor”
Order in plenty of hot broth.
That said it’s pretty obvious that restrictions slow infection even with an extremely infectious virus. Of course they do. But it’s not a permanent reduction. It’s just a timing difference. People get infected a bit later.
I am often called out as a namby-pamby, lockdown-loving-Covid-quisling by Barti Ddu. It is true I am cautious, and wear a mask, but I was out and about working to earn a crust, and dodge the virus whilst he was banging away on his keyboard from the safety of working at home. I am happy to continue doing this, but I would rather early sensible precautions if they can in any way avoid anything like full lockdowns later.
https://twitter.com/cjsnowdon/status/1476587915966877701/photo/1
(And it's true of the UK, France, and a bunch of other places.)
But (a) the German positivity rate has actually come down in the last month
and
(b) the drop started earlier in Germany, coincident with the implementation of restrictions.
So, is the real German case count 25k? Nope. I bet it's at least 3 or 4x that. But I don't believe the real case count was just 80k three weeks ago (when Germany had a 20+% positivity rate.)
Germany has seen cases decline from their peak. Now, will that continue given Omicron? Probably not. But numbers have done better there (and the Netherlands) where there were severe restrictions than in some other countries.
As they say, don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.
Elsie McSelphie must be spitting tacks….
https://twitter.com/AliNouriPhD/status/1476369203150077955
Just trying to remember how many nightclubs Berwick has. One, I think, just before the high level bridge.
Edit: actually, maybe it's just that the graph is difficult to read. Looks like for 29 December, the mean is ~3-4k admissions and the top end of the confidence interval is 5k. Still, not inspiring me with confidence they've got this right.
Take a disease with a natural R of 3. With restrictions, you can reduce that to 1.
That means that without restrictions you'll end up at about 85% infected before herd immunity is reached (because you have a lot of people infected when you hit the theoretical level of herd immunuty). Imagine if you have half the country with Covid, and an R of 1. Well, then everyone in the country will end up getting Covid, because each person passes it to another person.
With restrictions you end up with the eventual number getting it being v. close to the herd immunity number.
Me: Your childhood vaccinations would like a word with you.
https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1476620397424615425?s=20
The new ConservativeHome Tory members survey finds 35% want no new restrictions at all, 33% want only vaxports on the unvaccinated and 25% want just the restrictions we have now. Just 4% of Tory members want more restrictions on the vaccinated ie even smaller than the percentage of Tory members who wanted to stop Brexit
https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2021/12/a-plurality-of-our-panellists-say-no-more-lockdowns-but-a-quarter-back-vaccine-passports-instead.html
So we'll see whether Omicron is better or worse than Delta in terms of hospitalisations. But there is a difference. This time we are choosing to have hospitalisations over restrictions. We fully locked down for Delta. We had no other remedies.
It's one of the reasons why I am certain the tories will be out of office.
@cjsnowdon
·
21m
Replying to
@cjsnowdon
It must be very frustrating for clever academics to have to answer silly questions from the naive public.
I grudgingly put up with lockdown this time last year at the expense of my own health. Now, as I'm triple jabbed, you'd literally need to weld me in or throw me in jail to get me to comply. I can only speak for my own cohort of late twentysomething to late fortysomething friends, but the appetite for another lockdown is low.
I suspect there isn't much demographic crossover between my friends and the "stand up if you hate Boris" crowd at Ally Pally, but my guess is they're of a similar mind.
Now, if you're Boris, how do you propose keeping all of us locked up without a) draconian tactics not compatible with the norms of western democracy or b) falling so far behind in the polls your party replaces you?
Edit: found it. From 8:06 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM2VgBm9pTI
https://www.gbc.gi/news/exemptions-masks-can-now-only-be-issued-director-public-health
Gibraltar has restrictions. Life there is far from free in a pre March 2020 sense.
I can understand why someone such as yourself doesn't want people to know that wall to wall vaccination does not result in freedom.
But sorry, its the truth.
Speaking of comparable countries the Belgium-Netherlands differences are very significant.
@JamesMelville
·
5h
Almost a third of recorded Covid hospital cases in England are patients being primarily treated for a non Covid health problem. These are the rising number of Covid ‘incidental admissions’.
Source: NHS England /
@spectator
Anyway, a conviction in the colonies probably doesn't count.
This thread has tested positive