I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
If Omicron had arrived early 2020 it would have been far worse than the Wuhan strain, even if it were milder with no prior immunity or vaccines the case numbers and hospitalisations would have been enormous. I've no doubt that far more people would have died, and not only from covid but from everything else that we have to deal with, the NHS would have been knocked out. We are very fortunate that we now have vaccines, treatments, and prior immunity gained from earlier variants.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
No, you are still making an arse of yourself. Well done with the second thoughts about the Cowley bit, hur hur, but I'd go back in and delete it altogether.
Edit Well done!
Oxford graduates always so touchy. Must be something about defining yourself through the education establishments you attended.
I didn't go to Oxbridge, and you're being absolutely ridiculous.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is sparse. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Leicestershire, Berkshire, Hampshire, IOW, Mendip none available. An awful lot showing as very few available which is where they try and send you 100 miles away.
Are you trying to make out that everything is fine and there are plentiful tests everywhere? Yes we know we have had a few days of the system opening up at midday so "no tests available" reports in the morning are false, but this is the afternoon. And it's not the first day it's been like this
What's more the Health Secretary has said there is a major shortage of tests. Why do you know better than he does and what you yourself can see on the screen? Oh yeah, Don't Look Up
No, I keep saying, the system is just about at breaking point, its going to go snap. And it is filling up earlier every day.
But if you get up early or try again at midday, there are always full slate of PCR tests.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
Not many NI PB contributors?
Well, I don't think there's many French contributors to PB. But that doesn't seem to inhibit people from commenting frequently and extensively on what's going on in France.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is patchy. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Its definitely getting earlier in the day when it finally fills up.
Yes, I live in the north east of England with symptoms and no PCR and no LFTs.
Durham and Tyne and Wear have availability for PCR.
Just checked. 50 mile round trip for the closest one.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is patchy. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Its definitely getting earlier in the day when it finally fills up.
Yes, I live in the north east of England with symptoms and no PCR and no LFTs.
Durham and Tyne and Wear have availability for PCR.
Just checked. 50 mile round trip for the closest one.
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
I am still holding out for more data on virulence of omicron, but I am convinced that lockdown measures will be ineffective against it for a mixture of technical (the R0 of omicron) and behavioural (lockdown burnout) reasons.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
Not many NI PB contributors?
Do the NI lot celebrate anything very much, the Boyne aside? And fireworks are probably deprecated over there, and New Year's Day is possibly tainted with popery, and who gives a toss about NI anyway? Possibly hyufd has a yellow sticky on his monitor to remind him to pretend he does, but otherwise...
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
Global population 8bn = 80m @ 1%
“J-value” of a human life (Bristol, 2015) for prevention of death return calculations is £8.5m
I’ll arbitrarily use £2m because we are not all fortunate enough to live in the developed west. It’s only illustrative.
So if global spending on prevention of COVID deaths was less than £160 trillion then it would have been value enhancing
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
No, you are still making an arse of yourself. Well done with the second thoughts about the Cowley bit, hur hur, but I'd go back in and delete it altogether.
Edit Well done!
Oxford graduates always so touchy. Must be something about defining yourself through the education establishments you attended.
I didn't go to Oxbridge, and you're being absolutely ridiculous.
I have no idea who you are but I make no apologies for my ridiculousness.
I just thought it was 'quite interesting' in a similar way to the tale of Gordon Brown and the Romanian princess.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
Not many NI PB contributors?
Do the NI lot celebrate anything very much, the Boyne aside? And fireworks are probably deprecated over there, and New Year's Day is possibly tainted with popery, and who gives a toss about NI anyway? Possibly hyufd has a yellow sticky on his monitor to remind him to pretend he does, but otherwise...
Only half of them celebrate the Boyne ... but they all like their whiskey and stout.
Does anyone know how accurate the blood O2 measures are on a phone? And what numbers to look out for?
I've got a Galaxy S9+ and after testing positive yesterday I used the sensor for the first time in years to get a reading of 95. I then immediately tried it again a few times and got an 85, 86 and 88 which rather raises question marks against its reliability. Just tried again and got a 90.
As I understand it, dedicated pulse oximeters are transmissive (the light goes all the way through your finger). Ones built into your phone are based on reflection and not as reliable.
I looked into this because my employer had a product with a similar sensor, and I wondered at the start of the pandemic if we could ship an update giving all our customers a free oximeter, but it wouldn't have worked for this and other reasons.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is patchy. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Its definitely getting earlier in the day when it finally fills up.
Yes, I live in the north east of England with symptoms and no PCR and no LFTs.
Durham and Tyne and Wear have availability for PCR.
Just checked. 50 mile round trip for the closest one.
Scratch that. Finally filled in the million questions and it's saying:
"Friday 31 December
There are currently no slots available on this day. Try again this evening, when more test slots will be made available."
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is sparse. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Leicestershire, Berkshire, Hampshire, IOW, Mendip none available. An awful lot showing as very few available which is where they try and send you 100 miles away.
Are you trying to make out that everything is fine and there are plentiful tests everywhere? Yes we know we have had a few days of the system opening up at midday so "no tests available" reports in the morning are false, but this is the afternoon. And it's not the first day it's been like this
What's more the Health Secretary has said there is a major shortage of tests. Why do you know better than he does and what you yourself can see on the screen? Oh yeah, Don't Look Up
No, I keep saying, the system is just about at breaking point, its going to go snap. And it is filling up earlier every day.
But if you get up early or try again at midday, there are always full slate of PCR tests.
With demand now massively outstripping supply. My point was that for large chunks of the country all of 105 minutes into the booking window there is either nothing or "very limited" which likely means miles away.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
Still, interesting to note the number of people here who wouldn't even raise a single eyebrow over 1) the Johnson/Maxwell connection and 2) it was highlighted in the Spectator of all places.
No, you are still making an arse of yourself. Well done with the second thoughts about the Cowley bit, hur hur, but I'd go back in and delete it altogether.
Edit Well done!
Oxford graduates always so touchy. Must be something about defining yourself through the education establishments you attended.
Like I was the one who started it
And no need to be chippy, I didn't go to Oxford to spite you.
Surely it was to spite yourself
It was mainly just a gag, you listed 5 univs in order of pref in those days so I put Oxford, somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, Cambridge.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is sparse. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Leicestershire, Berkshire, Hampshire, IOW, Mendip none available. An awful lot showing as very few available which is where they try and send you 100 miles away.
Are you trying to make out that everything is fine and there are plentiful tests everywhere? Yes we know we have had a few days of the system opening up at midday so "no tests available" reports in the morning are false, but this is the afternoon. And it's not the first day it's been like this
What's more the Health Secretary has said there is a major shortage of tests. Why do you know better than he does and what you yourself can see on the screen? Oh yeah, Don't Look Up
No, I keep saying, the system is just about at breaking point, its going to go snap. And it is filling up earlier every day.
But if you get up early or try again at midday, there are always full slate of PCR tests.
With demand now massively outstripping supply. My point was that for large chunks of the country all of 105 minutes into the booking window there is either nothing or "very limited" which likely means miles away.
The "very limited" seems to mean none anyway. It was saying there was availability in Tyne and Wear and Durham but when you actually click through to them and fill in the questions, there's none.
🏴 320,532 🏴 34,357 🏴 31,690 NI 10,975
I did predict this that the week between Christmas and New Year it would really drop off as people have other things planned (and obviously plenty with COVID / isolating). I am not sure we are ever going to get past the million / day (again)*. Still a big chunk of 40-60 years haven't been boostered.
* depending how you measure it with some delayed figures from devolved nations.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
Your hypothetical 1% death rate and no long lasting disruption bar funeral homes is pure wish fulfillment fantasy.
1% death rate is the rough scientific evidence of the death rate for original Covid. Even in countries where its been left to rip and without healthcare systems available to all the death rate has not surpassed that. Not a single nation on the entire planet has surpassed 1% excess deaths since the pandemic began.
I said that I regretted backing lockdowns last year and that in hindsight I think they were a mistake before Omicron evolved, so my opinion being that today is not a reaction to Omicron. EDIT: That relates to @Endillion too.
Sure, but there's no country remotely similar to ours (in terms of age structure, prevalence of obesity/diabetes/other comorbidities, etc) which you can use to make that comparison. Every single possible reference point either has many fewer vulnerable people, or went into some form of lockdown. You have no way of knowing what would've happened and how many would've died if we'd done nothing and the health services simply fell over in May 2020.
4% of all people! And we can track COVID related hospitalisations to it as well. With today's data. The CHR must be absolutely tiny.
Roughly 2m to 10k or 200:1. The death rate used to be higher than that. Go vaccines!
7k in hospital *for* COVID so I'd guess at 1/300.
Again, these are the kinds of stats that the NHS will have been seeing which is why they seem unworried by Omicron.
At 1/300 the total number of potential hospitalisations from Omicron could be around 220k in all the UK and chances are the current hospitalisations are front loaded to the unvaccinated so the number is probably significantly lower.
But, but what does Nicola do now?
What a ridiculous question David. You think Nicola is bothered by "the science"?
We all know the answer: Something marginally different to England.
The contrast to tonight's New Year display in London to a deserted and dour Edinburgh and Cardiff will not be a good look for Sturgeon or Drakeford
What effect do you think it'll have on Welsh and Scotch polling, oh wise one? Will you keep you 100% record on predictions for the political futures of Sturgeon and Drakeford?
I have no idea but the Welsh news is interviewing border businesses who are seeing their income disappear to England and are not happy
You can extol the virtues of Sturgeon as much as you like but despite the SNP monopoly, Independence is as far away as ever and she knows it
The Scottish and Welsh Governments have both majored in caution throughout this interminable slog - and the First Ministers have vastly superior approval ratings to you know who. Even if it transpires to be demonstrable that the most recent round of restrictions have been useless they are most unlikely to suffer for it now, beyond the small cohort of frustrated business people to whom you refer.
The devolved elections took place relatively recently, but even so if I predicted a 90% probability of another SNP administration in Scotland after the next one, and a 99.99975% likelihood of Welsh Labour getting back in, then this would strike few dispassionate observers as outrageous. They're going nowhere.
In Scotland yes but labour in Wales did not win a majority and need the greens to govern
The conservatives need a new leader to start the recovery in their ratings in Wales, following Boris's disastrous couple of months
Plaid won't work with the Tories and are too eccentric and niche to overthrow Labour as the vastly more savvy SNP did, ergo Welsh Labour is immovable. This doesn't strike one as a particularly controversial idea.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
The newest entry I think has to be the most ridiculous. I was thinking back to my college days, I definitely interacted with some people who turned out to be absolute wrong'uns later in life, you know as a 19 year old I might have even gone drinking and partying with them.....
Did your sister write a 'we should understand more' piece about the wrong uns weeks before they were found guilty of grooming and sex trafficking?
People are not their sisters' keepers, to be scrupulously fair to the FLSOJ.
I think she is paid to make him look like a reasonably ok journalist. I can never safely be more than 6 feet from a serviceable sickbag until the memory of the word glamazon and the sentence it features in have faded.
Yes, glamazon was a keeper in the most unpleasant sense, like the taste of the alcohol that you first spewed your ring over.
This is an unpleasant smear story though.
I'm no apologist for Maxwell - I'm glad she's having to answer for her crimes - but to be fingered without any particular evidence to speak of as a Uni friend of Boris Johnson? This is totally uncalled for.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
Your hypothetical 1% death rate and no long lasting disruption bar funeral homes is pure wish fulfillment fantasy.
1% death rate is the rough scientific evidence of the death rate for original Covid. Even in countries where its been left to rip and without healthcare systems available to all the death rate has not surpassed that. Not a single nation on the entire planet has surpassed 1% excess deaths since the pandemic began.
I said that I regretted backing lockdowns last year and that in hindsight I think they were a mistake before Omicron evolved, so my opinion being that today is not a reaction to Omicron. EDIT: That relates to @Endillion too.
I found that claim surprising so I tried to check, and I only got more confused.
I strongly suspect that I've misunderstood the first one, but I think I'm a bit tired and I'm not seeing it clearly enough, so if someone can explain what the first one means I'd be grateful.
The former is a percentage of a percentage which is why its confusing.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Isn't that sort of differential roughly what you'd expect for "no difference", given the relative population densities?
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Err, that data relates to the 10 days until December 23rd, it has no bearing on the post Xmas restrictions brought in by Scotland, Wales and NI. Simply a function of London being the first epicentre of Omicron.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
No matter. Table service in pubs and banning parkrun will deal with it.
And early closing time.....
I thought the Quebec one being 10pm was particularly funny on the "we are doing something that won't make a blind bit of difference" scale.
Quebec is an actual curfew. For most people it means you have to be home by 10pm. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not, but do you have any evidence that it doesn't make any difference? I would have thought it would have a pretty big effect on the amount of socialising done in certain demographics.
People just shift their behaviour forward. We saw it in London when the UK closing time, you just end up with a choke point as everybody rushes to leave. And we know Omicron is so infectious, one individual can pass it on to many people in a really short space of time.
If you goal is absolute minimising of COVID transition, you have to close all public indoor spaces, not say well its 9pm, everybody needs to be home in an hour.
But do you have any evidence about the effects of actual curfews like Quebec's? I don't think the experience of changing the pub closing times in London answers the question at all.
Also, I don't know what the goal is in Quebec - presumably it isn't the "absolute minimising of COVID transition"?
My question is whether a 10pm -5am curfew (as in you aren't allowed to be out during those hours) makes "a blind bit of difference" or not. I would have thought it does have an effect.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
But number of infections doesn't matter
It does -
- dosruption - worse consequences
(a) some are delta (b) with that caveat, the no of hospitalizations from omicron also will be roughly proportional to the total no of cases (allowing for ages, and as the cirus spreads from the young to the old it will be a somewhat higher constant of proportionality)
We're not yet at the point we can be sure the actual no. turns out not to matter.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Err, that data relates to the 10 days until December 23rd, it has no bearing on the post Xmas restrictions brought in by Scotland, Wales and NI. Simply a function of London being the first epicentre of Omicron.
Point taken. But equally the restrictions in Scotland were more severe well before then, as rtehearsed ad lib here, and Glasgow was also the other early epicentre for omicron.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is sparse. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Leicestershire, Berkshire, Hampshire, IOW, Mendip none available. An awful lot showing as very few available which is where they try and send you 100 miles away.
Are you trying to make out that everything is fine and there are plentiful tests everywhere? Yes we know we have had a few days of the system opening up at midday so "no tests available" reports in the morning are false, but this is the afternoon. And it's not the first day it's been like this
What's more the Health Secretary has said there is a major shortage of tests. Why do you know better than he does and what you yourself can see on the screen? Oh yeah, Don't Look Up
No, I keep saying, the system is just about at breaking point, its going to go snap. And it is filling up earlier every day.
But if you get up early or try again at midday, there are always full slate of PCR tests.
With demand now massively outstripping supply. My point was that for large chunks of the country all of 105 minutes into the booking window there is either nothing or "very limited" which likely means miles away.
The "very limited" seems to mean none anyway. It was saying there was availability in Tyne and Wear and Durham but when you actually click through to them and fill in the questions, there's none.
+ve lateral flow tests should be considered "confirmed cases" at this point.
I don't see the point of 'needing confirmation' when the chance of a false negative from a PCR is going to be way higher than the chance of a false positive from a LFT.
Of course false negatives from LFTs are still going to be relatively high (The oft quoted inaccuracy about them) so PCRs should still be available for those who test -ve on LFTs but are symptomatic. That would be immediately implementable and should have been done ages ago.
Occupation - and probably being prejudicial here - but what % of construction workers are Eastern European?
It's not prejudicial if it's based on facts. My niece worked in a meat processing plant in Cornwall. Virtually all her co-workers were Romanian or Bulgarian. Very few were vaccinated, most tried not to get tested when it was voluntary. They have (with good reason for the older generation) a strong distrust of government.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
No matter. Table service in pubs and banning parkrun will deal with it.
And early closing time.....
I thought the Quebec one being 10pm was particularly funny on the "we are doing something that won't make a blind bit of difference" scale.
Quebec is an actual curfew. For most people it means you have to be home by 10pm. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not, but do you have any evidence that it doesn't make any difference? I would have thought it would have a pretty big effect on the amount of socialising done in certain demographics.
People just shift their behaviour forward. We saw it in London when the UK closing time, you just end up with a choke point as everybody rushes to leave. And we know Omicron is so infectious, one individual can pass it on to many people in a really short space of time.
If you goal is absolute minimising of COVID transition, you have to close all public indoor spaces, not say well its 9pm, everybody needs to be home in an hour.
But do you have any evidence about the effects of actual curfews like Quebec's? I don't think the experience of changing the pub closing times in London answers the question at all.
Also, I don't know what the goal is in Quebec - presumably it isn't the "absolute minimising of COVID transition"?
My question is whether a 10pm -5am curfew (as in you aren't allowed to be out during those hours) makes "a blind bit of difference" or not. I would have thought it does have an effect.
Actually household transmission has been shown to be extremely high with Omicron, putting people together in their own homes for longer might well be making it worse. You are letting people out, they can go to crowded public spaces, but must come back and hunker down for 7hrs+ a day sound a great recipe for picking it up somewhere, bringing it back and ensuring you get it through your household.
Unless you want to go totally closed borders + China style lockdown in you get any cases, the only other levers you can realistically pull is closure of any public spaces people gather in large numbers i.e. clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants, sports. And even then, its extremely debatable, because you still need to go to the supermarket, lots of people still have to go out to work, etc.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
But if you hived off the West Country it would look like Others
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Isn't that sort of differential roughly what you'd expect for "no difference", given the relative population densities?
No, because you have to go down to real life and look at square miles, that soert of level; regions like the Highlands don't matter for this as there are so few folk. Actually there are perhaps more flats and tenements in Scotland with common entrances which could be a real problem with omicron in view of the infectiousness.
A #COVID19 antiviral made by @Pfizer has been approved for use across the UK by @MHRAgovuk
There’s one company having a good pandemic.
Not only the first vaccine to market, but also the vaccine of choice for most of the Western world, and now an antiviral drug to treat those who do get it badly.
For every bunch of Sacklers giving the industry a bad name, there’s also a bunch of geniuses working to make the world in 2022 a better place.
And absolutely cleaning up on the money front from a project derisked by government. IP not shared. Massively unequal vaccine distribution hence prolonging the global pandemic.
I quite like what Astra did though. Bought their shares because of it.
Yep, there is a heck of a lot of bad behaviour in the drugs industry, and the Sacklers are just part of it.
"Bad Pharma" by Ben Goldacre is good on it - though it's not as good as 'Bad Science'.
As a recent example, Aducanumab’s approval for Alzheimer's seems worrying.
What’s wrong about the Adu approval?
Biogen f*cked up their futility analysis embarrassingly badly. The FDA ad-com took a conservative approach (I trial showed some benefit the other didn’t). The FDA ignored their advice (which they are entitled to do) to approve it on a balance of risk basis. Payors and prescribers have made their views clear.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
But if you hived off the West Country it would look like Others
Am I the only PB regular that hasn't (knowingly) had the Rona yet? It is getting a bit last Boris supporter.....
I am not sure that any of us really know. My son's partner produced a vaguely positive LFT last Wednesday, which led to them eventually getting positive PCR results (this Tuesday). She produced negative results on Thursday and Friday but Saturday's test also came up positive. My son's tests have been negative on a daily basis.
Emboldened by this negativity, my son dropped our presents off on Saturday, and despite a masked, and most fleeting encounter with my line manager wife alongside an open external door, he managed to infect her. So I am now living with Covid, but my daily LFTs continue to show negative.
Big O really is highly infectious. I don't see how we all avoid getting infected over the next few months.
Probably best to get it over and done with if you are reasonably fit.
Not how I'm viewing it. I intend to dodge the thing as long as possible. Viruses evolve to become nicer - Darwin tells us this with his Theory that's more like a fact - so my plan is to catch it in about 2027, by which time the main symptom will be a hankering for chocolate.
While you're waiting why not get yourself by a dog carrying the at least 3 millennia old rabies virus, to silence the doubters and the h8ers about that theory? (Which is nothing to do with Darwin).
You'll never catch me and a dog within a mile of each other. Of all the hangups I have this is the one I'd most like to get rid of. Runs deep though - attacked by one when I was 3.
Darwin? Is there a person whose name is more taken in vain than He? Not sure there is. Apart from GOD.
Occupation - and probably being prejudicial here - but what % of construction workers are Eastern European?
It's not prejudicial if it's based on facts. My niece worked in a meat processing plant in Cornwall. Virtually all her co-workers were Romanian or Bulgarian. Very few were vaccinated, most tried not to get tested when it was voluntary. They have (with good reason for the older generation) a strong distrust of government.
A distrust bordering on conspiracy theory is the normal state of affairs for most human beings worldwide. A mentality based on moderate skepticism and distrust of extremism is a unique thing to a handful of northern European countries and a few offshoots.
Actually household transmission has been shown to be extremely high with Omicron, putting people together in their own homes for longer might well be making it worse. You are letting people out, they can go to public spaces, but must come back and hunker down for 7hrs+ a day.
With perhaps the mildest New Year's ever, we really ought to say "go outside".
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
You can't really isolate a single cause by looking at bulk figures. You need to do a proper regression analysis. Even though I am inclined to agree with you about this, this is not the smoking gun you're looking for.
Quite so. Just that it's not evidence either way of the PBLibertarian doctrine.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
Not many NI PB contributors?
Do the NI lot celebrate anything very much, the Boyne aside? And fireworks are probably deprecated over there, and New Year's Day is possibly tainted with popery, and who gives a toss about NI anyway? Possibly hyufd has a yellow sticky on his monitor to remind him to pretend he does, but otherwise...
Firework sales are high at the border because they're banned in the Republic.
There are now swathes of the country where no PCR tests are available. Helpful...
Are there, I have it up now....Scotland and NI nothing. Wales nearly out. NE is patchy. The rest of England there is widespread availability, although filling up.
Its definitely getting earlier in the day when it finally fills up.
Yes, I live in the north east of England with symptoms and no PCR and no LFTs.
When my wife went for her PCR earlier this week, she was congratulated for having made an appointment. Most other people were just rocking up.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
Your hypothetical 1% death rate and no long lasting disruption bar funeral homes is pure wish fulfillment fantasy.
1% death rate is the rough scientific evidence of the death rate for original Covid. Even in countries where its been left to rip and without healthcare systems available to all the death rate has not surpassed that. Not a single nation on the entire planet has surpassed 1% excess deaths since the pandemic began.
I said that I regretted backing lockdowns last year and that in hindsight I think they were a mistake before Omicron evolved, so my opinion being that today is not a reaction to Omicron. EDIT: That relates to @Endillion too.
You posited the infection rate of Omicron with the lethality of Wuhan.
Wuhan only had the death rate it did because it spread as slow as it did.
Actually household transmission has been shown to be extremely high with Omicron, putting people together in their own homes for longer might well be making it worse. You are letting people out, they can go to public spaces, but must come back and hunker down for 7hrs+ a day.
With perhaps the mildest New Year's ever, we really ought to say "go outside".
The claim today from one academic is even then, a whiff of it is enough. So you better only go outside with your FPP3 mask and miles from anybody else....
The reality is unless you never go outside, everybody is getting exposed, and soon. Then its just a matter of probabilities. Flatten the curve measures need to be incredible strong to make a dent, some sort of fudge about its fine to be in a bar until 5pm (in Ireland) isn't going to make any difference.
Am I the only PB regular that hasn't (knowingly) had the Rona yet? It is getting a bit last Boris supporter.....
I am not sure that any of us really know. My son's partner produced a vaguely positive LFT last Wednesday, which led to them eventually getting positive PCR results (this Tuesday). She produced negative results on Thursday and Friday but Saturday's test also came up positive. My son's tests have been negative on a daily basis.
Emboldened by this negativity, my son dropped our presents off on Saturday, and despite a masked, and most fleeting encounter with my line manager wife alongside an open external door, he managed to infect her. So I am now living with Covid, but my daily LFTs continue to show negative.
Big O really is highly infectious. I don't see how we all avoid getting infected over the next few months.
Probably best to get it over and done with if you are reasonably fit.
Not how I'm viewing it. I intend to dodge the thing as long as possible. Viruses evolve to become nicer - Darwin tells us this with his Theory that's more like a fact - so my plan is to catch it in about 2027, by which time the main symptom will be a hankering for chocolate.
While you're waiting why not get yourself by a dog carrying the at least 3 millennia old rabies virus, to silence the doubters and the h8ers about that theory? (Which is nothing to do with Darwin).
You'll never catch me and a dog within a mile of each other. Of all the hangups I have this is the one I'd most like to get rid of. Runs deep though - attacked by one when I was 3.
Darwin? Is there a person whose name is more taken in vain than He? Not sure there is. Apart from GOD.
Yet actually owning a dog would reduce the number likely to want to bite you by one.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Err, that data relates to the 10 days until December 23rd, it has no bearing on the post Xmas restrictions brought in by Scotland, Wales and NI. Simply a function of London being the first epicentre of Omicron.
Point taken. But equally the restrictions in Scotland were more severe well before then, as rtehearsed ad lib here, and Glasgow was also the other early epicentre for omicron.
What were the restrictions in Scotland before Christmas? Hard to keep track of these days, for any country.
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Isn't that sort of differential roughly what you'd expect for "no difference", given the relative population densities?
No, because you have to go down to real life and look at square miles, that soert of level; regions like the Highlands don't matter for this as there are so few folk. Actually there are perhaps more flats and tenements in Scotland with common entrances which could be a real problem with omicron in view of the infectiousness.
I've no idea if that's valid, hence why I phrased it as a question. I do however know that there is nothing in Scotland/Wales/NI remotely like London, in terms of a centre for spreading things like viruses round the country - especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
🏴 320,532 🏴 34,357 🏴 31,690 NI 10,975
I did predict this that the week between Christmas and New Year it would really drop off as people have other things planned (and obviously plenty with COVID / isolating). I am not sure we are ever going to get past the million / day (again)*. Still a big chunk of 40-60 years haven't been boostered.
* depending how you measure it with some delayed figures from devolved nations.
The number of third jabs to go for England and Scotland are
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Err, that data relates to the 10 days until December 23rd, it has no bearing on the post Xmas restrictions brought in by Scotland, Wales and NI. Simply a function of London being the first epicentre of Omicron.
Point taken. But equally the restrictions in Scotland were more severe well before then, as rtehearsed ad lib here, and Glasgow was also the other early epicentre for omicron.
What were the restrictions in Scotland before Christmas? Hard to keep track of these days, for any country.
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
I am still holding out for more data on virulence of omicron, but I am convinced that lockdown measures will be ineffective against it for a mixture of technical (the R0 of omicron) and behavioural (lockdown burnout) reasons.
I ran a crude CAR (Case Admissions Rate) calculation for the England data....
I note that Sturgeon and Drakeford are getting a lot of flak from the usual suspects on here for their draconian New Year restrictions. It may be deserved, though I'm not sure.
However, I never hear a peep about the Northern Irish Assembly, who I think have imposed terribly similar restrictions for New Year's Eve as the Welsh and Scots. Why is that, I wonder?
FWIW, I think ni have got it wrong, too.
What I’m interested to see is, will any of them impose further restrictions when their current restrictions don’t make much difference?
Slightly puzzled by the PB pundits' repeated statements that the policies make no difference at all, nada, zip, no sirree. As empirical observation shows current infections:
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
Isn't that sort of differential roughly what you'd expect for "no difference", given the relative population densities?
No, because you have to go down to real life and look at square miles, that soert of level; regions like the Highlands don't matter for this as there are so few folk. Actually there are perhaps more flats and tenements in Scotland with common entrances which could be a real problem with omicron in view of the infectiousness.
I've no idea if that's valid, hence why I phrased it as a question. I do however know that there is nothing in Scotland/Wales/NI remotely like London, in terms of a centre for spreading things like viruses round the country - especially in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
What's wrong with Glasgow? Even closer links to the Edinburgh area than London to Brum. And that's the Central Belt done. Which is what happened with omicron.
It's obviously got harder and harder to defend the PM and his government over this year, even as a loyal Tory, but it hasn't got any more difficult to laugh at some of the most ludicrous attempts to attack him.
I think these are my favourite of the year so far:
- Professor Peston's mirror - Binbaggate - in something of a sequel to last year's Giant Baby story - And if Carrie is pregnant, I’m the Queen of Spades! (there were many, many tweets saying the same around then) - The Johnson Variant; probably deserves a separate category for its odd wind of Keirdness - a brand new entry; nearly 40 years ago Boris knew a girl in the year below at his college whose Dad had been a Labour MP and had a huge party mansion down the road. She turned out bad. So. Well. You know what that means.
I'm sure I've missed some corkers.
Yes, ridiculous, but hardly a Boris-only thing. Remember when people were measuring Corbyn's cenotaph bow with a protractor?
Sure, but that wasn't discussed by anyone important. Three of these were proposed as serious ideas by the LOTO, a QC and a Political Editor.
Being LOTO, QC, or Political Editor doesn't immunise you from being a bit of an idiot. Corbyn, Peston, Hague, Kuenssberg, Cox, Howard, Miliband, Kinnock. We could be here all day.
IDS! Fuck me, how did I leave IDS out?
Don’t worry. We all try to erase that particular episode from our memory
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
I am still holding out for more data on virulence of omicron, but I am convinced that lockdown measures will be ineffective against it for a mixture of technical (the R0 of omicron) and behavioural (lockdown burnout) reasons.
I ran a crude CAR (Case Admissions Rate) calculation for the England data....
Occupation - and probably being prejudicial here - but what % of construction workers are Eastern European?
It's not prejudicial if it's based on facts. My niece worked in a meat processing plant in Cornwall. Virtually all her co-workers were Romanian or Bulgarian. Very few were vaccinated, most tried not to get tested when it was voluntary. They have (with good reason for the older generation) a strong distrust of government.
A distrust bordering on conspiracy theory is the normal state of affairs for most human beings worldwide. A mentality based on moderate skepticism and distrust of extremism is a unique thing to a handful of northern European countries and a few offshoots.
yes and i think ultimately countries like the UK will become more like the rest of the world in distrust of govt....could be a good thing though
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
No matter. Table service in pubs and banning parkrun will deal with it.
And early closing time.....
I thought the Quebec one being 10pm was particularly funny on the "we are doing something that won't make a blind bit of difference" scale.
Quebec is an actual curfew. For most people it means you have to be home by 10pm. I have no idea whether this is a good idea or not, but do you have any evidence that it doesn't make any difference? I would have thought it would have a pretty big effect on the amount of socialising done in certain demographics.
People just shift their behaviour forward. We saw it in London when the UK closing time, you just end up with a choke point as everybody rushes to leave. And we know Omicron is so infectious, one individual can pass it on to many people in a really short space of time.
If you goal is absolute minimising of COVID transition, you have to close all public indoor spaces, not say well its 9pm, everybody needs to be home in an hour.
But do you have any evidence about the effects of actual curfews like Quebec's? I don't think the experience of changing the pub closing times in London answers the question at all.
Also, I don't know what the goal is in Quebec - presumably it isn't the "absolute minimising of COVID transition"?
My question is whether a 10pm -5am curfew (as in you aren't allowed to be out during those hours) makes "a blind bit of difference" or not. I would have thought it does have an effect.
Actually household transmission has been shown to be extremely high with Omicron, putting people together in their own homes for longer might well be making it worse. You are letting people out, they can go to crowded public spaces, but must come back and hunker down for 7hrs+ a day sound a great recipe for picking it up somewhere, bringing it back and ensuring you get it through your household.
Unless you want to go totally closed borders + China style lockdown in you get any cases, the only other levers you can realistically pull is closure of any public spaces people gather in large numbers i.e. clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants, sports. And even then, its debatable, because you still need to go to the supermarket, lots of people still have to go out to work.
Now, as I said, I just don't know, I was just wondering if you had any evidence, rather than just speculation, because you made such a definitive statement.
My own experience of night-time curfew this year suggests it might have some effect. There are plenty of people who dropped socialising and mixing after work, for example, because it doesn't really work if you have to be home by 10pm. And there's a reduction in some of the riskier behaviour that comes with staying up late, drinking, partying etc. Certainly the normally very busy streets around my home were almost completely deserted in the hour before curfew (as well as after...).
It's completely different to just closing pubs at 10pm.
And Omicron cuts both ways - if it's so transmissible within homes will, people spending an extra 2 or 3 hours together in their homes (if they are anyway mixing there) will make any difference?
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
In hindsight I think the Swedes were right. I am willing to say I called it wrong last year when I opposed the Swedish method and wish @contrarian were still around so I could apologise to him over that. Perhaps @MISTY might be able to pass on the message.
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
Like I say, I'm pretending you aren't airing such a nonsensical notion. No tumble on this. I'm a busy man today.
But, look, what gives with the doxxing of another poster? When someone does it to you you're up in arms, now here you are doing it yourself. The sheer nauseating hypocrisy of it takes the biscuit.
I really should have put money on "when the mild varient turns up covidminiziers/psychotics will use it as evidence that it has all been a big fuss about nothing and we should have never have tslen any minimisation measures" because that was a sure thing.
We're back to March 2020 "no worse than a bad flu season"
Who's saying that? I don't see a single person saying that.
Its much worse than a bad flu season, but the damage from restrictions has been worse than the damage from Covid.
Your hypothetical 1% death rate and no long lasting disruption bar funeral homes is pure wish fulfillment fantasy.
1% death rate is the rough scientific evidence of the death rate for original Covid. Even in countries where its been left to rip and without healthcare systems available to all the death rate has not surpassed that. Not a single nation on the entire planet has surpassed 1% excess deaths since the pandemic began.
I said that I regretted backing lockdowns last year and that in hindsight I think they were a mistake before Omicron evolved, so my opinion being that today is not a reaction to Omicron. EDIT: That relates to @Endillion too.
You posited the infection rate of Omicron with the lethality of Wuhan.
Wuhan only had the death rate it did because it spread as slow as it did.
Faster spread of Wuhan == higher death rate.
Indeed but how much higher would it be? Not everyone is guaranteed to catch the virus even with the higher infection rate.
1% deaths would be 25% more deaths than the highest on the planet has recorded in excess deaths since the pandemic began - and that's a relatively small nation that is an outlier. It would be about 50% more deaths than the second and third highest death tolls on the entire planet.
Negative lft this morning so Hogmanay party is on!
Just picked my GF up from a Covid infected ward though, so likely that we'll all come back absolutely riddled.
Horrendous weather as we head up the M90/A9.
Early start tomorrow as off to see the Victory and the Mary Rose… perfect excuse for not celebrating the new year.
Don't forget the Warrior as a possibility, if you've never been. Anyway have a good time.
We do have a third attraction we can go to but with a 5 hour round trip and a 9 year old I’m not sure we’ll get to it… thanks for the recommendation though
That's certainly the logical sequence anyway with Victory and Mary Rose being the two older ships close to each other. Warrior would be good for a good weather trip combined with the Tower and a harbour cruise perhaps.
There's also the D-Day museum - highly rated since it was entirely re-vamped with lottery funding
Oh, that's good to know. Must be the one on the Southsea front near the castle. Was shut when I went last. Looking forward to another trip to see that and some of the other history such as the old ammunition depot and Palmerston forts and take Mrs C to see Porchester Castle.
Talk of Porchester always leaves me in a sweat.
A trip on the IoW ferry and a wander around Osborn is something for day two. What a great view Victoria had of the Spinnaker Tower!
Am I missing something about Porchester? Or is it jujst that there is so much walking and scrambling to do?
Yes, think someone who doesn't sweat and Google that name alongside Porchester.
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
In hindsight I think the Swedes were right. I am willing to say I called it wrong last year when I opposed the Swedish method and wish @contrarian were still around so I could apologise to him over that. Perhaps @MISTY might be able to pass on the message.
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
Like I say, I'm pretending you aren't airing such a nonsensical notion. No tumble on this. I'm a busy man today.
But, look, what gives with the doxxing of another poster? When someone does it to you you're up in arms, now here you are doing it yourself. The sheer nauseating hypocrisy of it takes the biscuit.
i think the problem is in the UK we have a very aged unhealthy population. Such a population is easy to terrify...with the result we had 3 strong lockdowns totalling about 8 months....plus countless other months with restrictions
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
I am still holding out for more data on virulence of omicron, but I am convinced that lockdown measures will be ineffective against it for a mixture of technical (the R0 of omicron) and behavioural (lockdown burnout) reasons.
Too late now anyway. The Omi script is written. Looks to me like the govt has made the right call and we must hope so because the call is made.
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
If this is right, then something like back to normal by spring, with more and more people realising that everyone gets it, sometimes old and very ill people die, we manage other illnesses without it dominating the headlines every day for 2 years, the NHS gives regular guidance about everything from thrush to bubonic plague without anyone getting excited, and Covid is one more of these, sometimes it is sensible to be cautious, and every six months everyone has an injection.
Hope so.
This leaves a couple of interesting questions:
What about the several million unvaccinated, who will increasingly be the dalits of our society. Some will die without good reason.
Does it give Boris one tiny chance to be ahead of the game and rescue himself?
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
In hindsight I think the Swedes were right. I am willing to say I called it wrong last year when I opposed the Swedish method and wish @contrarian were still around so I could apologise to him over that. Perhaps @MISTY might be able to pass on the message.
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
Like I say, I'm pretending you aren't airing such a nonsensical notion. No tumble on this. I'm a busy man today.
But, look, what gives with the doxxing of another poster? When someone does it to you you're up in arms, now here you are doing it yourself. The sheer nauseating hypocrisy of it takes the biscuit.
A #COVID19 antiviral made by @Pfizer has been approved for use across the UK by @MHRAgovuk
There’s one company having a good pandemic.
Not only the first vaccine to market, but also the vaccine of choice for most of the Western world, and now an antiviral drug to treat those who do get it badly.
For every bunch of Sacklers giving the industry a bad name, there’s also a bunch of geniuses working to make the world in 2022 a better place.
And absolutely cleaning up on the money front from a project derisked by government. IP not shared. Massively unequal vaccine distribution hence prolonging the global pandemic.
I quite like what Astra did though. Bought their shares because of it.
Yep, there is a heck of a lot of bad behaviour in the drugs industry, and the Sacklers are just part of it.
"Bad Pharma" by Ben Goldacre is good on it - though it's not as good as 'Bad Science'.
As a recent example, Aducanumab’s approval for Alzheimer's seems worrying.
What’s wrong about the Adu approval?
Biogen f*cked up their futility analysis embarrassingly badly. The FDA ad-com took a conservative approach (I trial showed some benefit the other didn’t). The FDA ignored their advice (which they are entitled to do) to approve it on a balance of risk basis. Payors and prescribers have made their views clear.
Occupation - and probably being prejudicial here - but what % of construction workers are Eastern European?
It's not prejudicial if it's based on facts. My niece worked in a meat processing plant in Cornwall. Virtually all her co-workers were Romanian or Bulgarian. Very few were vaccinated, most tried not to get tested when it was voluntary. They have (with good reason for the older generation) a strong distrust of government.
That just means my prejudices were right… not that they weren’t prejudice (I have no idea of the facts)
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
If this is right, then something like back to normal by spring, with more and more people realising that everyone gets it, sometimes old and very ill people die, we manage other illnesses without it dominating the headlines every day for 2 years, the NHS gives regular guidance about everything from thrush to bubonic plague without anyone getting excited, and Covid is one more of these, sometimes it is sensible to be cautious, and every six months everyone has an injection.
Hope so.
This leaves a couple of interesting questions:
What about the several million unvaccinated, who will increasingly be the dalits of our society. Some will die without good reason.
Does it give Boris one tiny chance to be ahead of the game and rescue himself?
i think you might have a problem with the everyone has an injection every 6 months...Nigel Farage for one is off that train
what i mean by a good thing is that there will not be the same meek compliance in the future as the state tramples all over civil liberties....
A respect for following the rules and making necessary sacrifices during times of national crisis is what makes Britain great.
Some people resented putting out their lights during German air raids.
it is when you have a decent govt acting in good faith....when you have the present govt its a disadvantage
Every country has relatively good governments and bad governments. The difference is that Britain (along with other countries like Ireland, Germany etc) have sensible cultures and institutions that channel even mediocre or bad actors into mainly doing things that are helpful. That is why Britain, Ireland, Germany etc have stable democracies with increasing average incomes decade after decade.
This is all true even though political and media incentives are all about focusing on the negatives and convincing everyone stuff is shit all the time.
So here's my current theory on the mismatch between infections and in hospital for COVID. Three doses of vaccines gives close to zero protection from asymptomatic infection, I have seen that close up with my parents, both triple dosed for a few weeks before they got infected, neither have had any symptoms at all but both PCR positive. So what we may actually have is close to 100% of people in the country likely to get some kind of Omicron infection which is why the infection stats look absolutely terrible with ~200k per day being detected by testing and 2.2m people in England having it last week.
However, it seems as though very few of the infected actually get severe symptoms, whether that's because Omicron is inherently more mild or because of high rates of immunity against severe disease or both is still a bit of an unknown, but it seems very difficult to deny it now.
Looking at the specific data release from the ONS, Delta still accounted for around a third of the total cases over the previous monitoring period which means of the 7k in hospital a very significant proportion will have been because of Delta, for the 1.4m Omicron cases during the monitoring period we may actually only have seen a 2-4k hospitalisations *for* COVID. Once again, this proved why the NHS trusts are so bullish over not needing more restrictions and the government also more bullish than most of us expected.
Here's the bottom line - Omicron may only have a CHR of 1/400 to 1/700 in the UK with our level of population immunity. Delta we know had a CHR of around 1/100 over the summer/autumn but with a worse population immunity profile.
That's my theory too. Everyone will get it, relatively few will notice.
I am still holding out for more data on virulence of omicron, but I am convinced that lockdown measures will be ineffective against it for a mixture of technical (the R0 of omicron) and behavioural (lockdown burnout) reasons.
I ran a crude CAR (Case Admissions Rate) calculation for the England data....
Admissions highest in kids ?
Almost perfect* inverse ratio to triple vaccination rates
*Edit: save 0-5 age cohort, which is probably a non-independent variable as they belong with parents (i.e. they are accompanied by parents wherever they go and so their exposure level mirrors that of their parents')
BBC - Whiff of infected breath enough to catch Omicron - Openshaw
More from Professor Peter Openshaw, who says someone only needs to be exposed to "a whiff of infected breath" to catch the highly transmissible Omicron variant of coronavirus.
"Omicron is so infectious. We're lucky really that it wasn't this infectious when it first moved into human-to-human transmission," he told BBC Breakfast.
"We've had several iterations of this virus going through different stages of its evolution.
"It has ended up being so infectious that it almost needs just a whiff of infected breath and you could get infected."
Or its a shame it wasn't this infectious originally because if it was this infectious when we had no idea what it was it would have burnt out in the space of a month or two and then we'd have gotten back to normal instead of spending two years obsessing over Covid.
But then it would have been going over an unvaccinated population, so swings and roundabouts.
Had it been this infectious to begin with, it would have been carnage. Mind you, the world might have shutdown air travel that much faster had 1% of China died in a couple of weeks.
It would have been carnage but we'd have ripped off the bandage much quicker.
I'm far from convinced that having two years of lockdowns was in hindsight worth preventing 1% of global population from dying. Considering that life expectancy from here isn't 100 years for the people who were dying.
I am far from convinced a disease as infectious as Omicron and as deadly as the original variant would have been 1% fatality. Bear in mind health systems would simply have imploded under the pressure so even quite minor infections, coughs etc might easily have been fatal. And it would certainly have gone charging through sub-Saharan Africa and not in a good way.
Yes it would have burnt through very quickly and lots of people would have died, but then it would have been over almost as soon as it began. Close to a million die of natural causes anyway in a two year period and aren't getting that time they've lost back. There wouldn't be expanded waiting lists for years to come for cancer, hips, dental and all the other postponements. There wouldn't have been years of disrupted education. There wouldn't have been trillions spent.
There'd need to be surge money spent on funeral homes for a few weeks, but the rest of society I suspect would have been better off if it had just ripped out of control immediately. Cynical but true.
Almost all countries with the necessary resource & infrastructure did lockdowns of some sort. The main exceptions were those run by fascist 'strongmen' types unencumbered with giving a shit about their citizens. It's very unlikely their approach was the better one. So unlikely, in fact, that I'm not sure it was worth floating. So I'm going to pretend you didn't. Think that's best.
In hindsight I think the Swedes were right. I am willing to say I called it wrong last year when I opposed the Swedish method and wish @contrarian were still around so I could apologise to him over that. Perhaps @MISTY might be able to pass on the message.
Yes lockdowns do seem to have become the populist option in the Democratic world but that doesn't make them right. The fascist 'strongmen' types have possibly been able to do the right thing by their countries unencumbered by the need to appeal to their voters.
However I 100% entirely prefer democracy even if democracy sometimes means we end up having to do the wrong and populist thing instead of the right unpopular thing. Its funny to see those who regularly abhor populism rush to defend it here though.
Like I say, I'm pretending you aren't airing such a nonsensical notion. No tumble on this. I'm a busy man today.
But, look, what gives with the doxxing of another poster? When someone does it to you you're up in arms, now here you are doing it yourself. The sheer nauseating hypocrisy of it takes the biscuit.
i think the problem is in the UK we have a very aged unhealthy population.
I've set up a monthly donation and would encourage others to do the same. I can imagine that running a website with 1000+ anonymous comments every day is very difficult work and the outlook in terms of regulation and risk is bad given the endless panic driven government policy initiatives about online safety and abuse. I've followed this website for years and have got a lot out of the commentary on it so would like to see it keep going. Cheers.
Comments
But if you get up early or try again at midday, there are always full slate of PCR tests.
Congratulations to Jan Moir for sneaking in right at the end to win worst take of the year.
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1476911840240222208/photo/1
“J-value” of a human life (Bristol, 2015) for prevention of death return calculations is £8.5m
I’ll arbitrarily use £2m because we are not all fortunate enough to live in the developed west. It’s only illustrative.
So if global spending on prevention of COVID deaths was less than £160 trillion then it would have been value enhancing
I just thought it was 'quite interesting' in a similar way to the tale of Gordon Brown and the Romanian princess.
I looked into this because my employer had a product with a similar sensor, and I wondered at the start of the pandemic if we could ship an update giving all our customers a free oximeter, but it wouldn't have worked for this and other reasons.
"Friday 31 December
There are currently no slots available on this day. Try again this evening, when more test slots will be made available."
Same for the next 5 days.
Waste of time.
🏴 320,532
🏴 34,357
🏴 31,690
NI 10,975
I did predict this that the week between Christmas and New Year it would really drop off as people have other things planned (and obviously plenty with COVID / isolating). I am not sure we are ever going to get past the million / day (again)*. Still a big chunk of 40-60 years haven't been boostered.
* depending how you measure it with some delayed figures from devolved nations.
Spiked will be gnashing their teeth at not getting in first with that hot take.
England = 1 in 25 = 0.04 in decimal terms
Others = 1 in 40 = 0.025 in decimal terms
(albeit with error ranges as pointed out earlier)
As a percentage of the English rate the 'others' are doing 37% less ...
[I know this is crude, and we will have to wait till 14 jan or so for clear data, but it's still odd to be saying that so emphatically so early]
I'm no apologist for Maxwell - I'm glad she's having to answer for her crimes - but to be fingered without any particular evidence to speak of as a Uni friend of Boris Johnson? This is totally uncalled for.
Talk about kicking someone when they're down.
But I'd have to do 50 miles in 20 minutes to make the appointment.
The Economist has the best excess death tracker on the web that I've seen: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
It peaks at 847/100k in Bulgaria which is 0.847%
Russia and Serbia are next at basically 0.7%
The UK is 36th at 0.217% [almost all of which occurred pre-vaccines]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/story-behind-broken-britain-new-years-eve-picture-went-viral/
Also, I don't know what the goal is in Quebec - presumably it isn't the "absolute minimising of COVID transition"?
My question is whether a 10pm -5am curfew (as in you aren't allowed to be out during those hours) makes "a blind bit of difference" or not. I would have thought it does have an effect.
- dosruption
- worse consequences
(a) some are delta
(b) with that caveat, the no of hospitalizations from omicron also will be roughly proportional to the total no of cases (allowing for ages, and as the cirus spreads from the young to the old it will be a somewhat higher constant of proportionality)
We're not yet at the point we can be sure the actual no. turns out not to matter.
I don't see the point of 'needing confirmation' when the chance of a false negative from a PCR is going to be way higher than the chance of a false positive from a LFT.
Of course false negatives from LFTs are still going to be relatively high (The oft quoted inaccuracy about them) so PCRs should still be available for those who test -ve on LFTs but are symptomatic. That would be immediately implementable and should have been done ages ago.
Unless you want to go totally closed borders + China style lockdown in you get any cases, the only other levers you can realistically pull is closure of any public spaces people gather in large numbers i.e. clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants, sports. And even then, its extremely debatable, because you still need to go to the supermarket, lots of people still have to go out to work, etc.
Almost every hospital in Northern Ireland is now operating beyond capacity. Overall system is at 105%.
South West Acute @ 110% capacity.
Daisy Hill @ 110%.
https://twitter.com/darranmarshall/status/1476918758899916800?s=21
Blessed be for the fact Northern Ireland isn’t a part of mainland Britain.
https://www.covidlive.co.uk/
Biogen f*cked up their futility analysis embarrassingly badly. The FDA ad-com took a conservative approach (I trial showed some benefit the other didn’t). The FDA ignored their advice (which they are entitled to do) to approve it on a balance of risk basis. Payors and prescribers have made their views clear.
May well be the case. But Glasgow seeded omicron as earlyu as London and is also very densely populated.
Too early to say anyway, except it's too early to say.
Darwin? Is there a person whose name is more taken in vain than He? Not sure there is. Apart from GOD.
Not that I am bored or anything.
Wuhan only had the death rate it did because it spread as slow as it did.
Faster spread of Wuhan == higher death rate.
The reality is unless you never go outside, everybody is getting exposed, and soon. Then its just a matter of probabilities. Flatten the curve measures need to be incredible strong to make a dent, some sort of fudge about its fine to be in a bar until 5pm (in Ireland) isn't going to make any difference.
And give the rest something else to aim at.
18 29 3,137,497
30 39 2,777,006
40 49 2,028,173
50 54 719,862
55 59 555,506
60 64 338,746
65 69 190,689
70 74 130,163
75 79 88,620
80+ 157,299
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VurcwV-3zNc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VurcwV-3zNc
new thread
My own experience of night-time curfew this year suggests it might have some effect. There are plenty of people who dropped socialising and mixing after work, for example, because it doesn't really work if you have to be home by 10pm. And there's a reduction in some of the riskier behaviour that comes with staying up late, drinking, partying etc. Certainly the normally very busy streets around my home were almost completely deserted in the hour before curfew (as well as after...).
It's completely different to just closing pubs at 10pm.
And Omicron cuts both ways - if it's so transmissible within homes will, people spending an extra 2 or 3 hours together in their homes (if they are anyway mixing there) will make any difference?
But, look, what gives with the doxxing of another poster? When someone does it to you you're up in arms, now here you are doing it yourself. The sheer nauseating hypocrisy of it takes the biscuit.
1% deaths would be 25% more deaths than the highest on the planet has recorded in excess deaths since the pandemic began - and that's a relatively small nation that is an outlier. It would be about 50% more deaths than the second and third highest death tolls on the entire planet.
That seems a reasonably close estimate.
Some people resented putting out their lights during German air raids.
Are you a great big tiger then?
Hope so.
This leaves a couple of interesting questions:
What about the several million unvaccinated, who will increasingly be the dalits of our society. Some will die without good reason.
Does it give Boris one tiny chance to be ahead of the game and rescue himself?
+others
This is all true even though political and media incentives are all about focusing on the negatives and convincing everyone stuff is shit all the time.
*Edit: save 0-5 age cohort, which is probably a non-independent variable as they belong with parents (i.e. they are accompanied by parents wherever they go and so their exposure level mirrors that of their parents')
Median age/life expectancy:
Germany: 47.0 / 81.0
Italy: 46.5 / 83.3
Spain: 43.9 / 83.6
France: 41.7 / 82.7
UK: 40.6 / 81.3
Russia: 40.3 / 73.6
https://www.worlddata.info/average-age.php
2 main headlines:
1. Severity analysis is settling around 60-70% reduced risk of hospitalisation with Omicron vs Delta
Regardless of variant, a booster/3rd dose significantly reduces the risk of hospitalisation (85-90% vs unvaxxed)
2. Updated Vaccine Effectiveness analysis
Shows that while protection against *infection* starts to wane quickly for Omicron (from 4-9 weeks post-booster)
Protection from *hospitalisation* is high 88%. We know from Tcell studies it is unlikely to wane so quickly
https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1476930728688451584?s=20