Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
'Conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse also objected to the position of the EU flag: "Preside over Europe yes, erase French identity no!", she tweeted'
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
A bit like the Chronicles of Narnia then.
Oh, is that so? I've only read TLTWATW, and had no wish to continue. At what point should I expect something tolerable to emerge?
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
A bit like the Chronicles of Narnia then.
Oh, is that so? I've only read TLTWATW, and had no wish to continue. At what point should I expect something tolerable to emerge?
I loved those books as a kid, despite (or because of?) the symbology. I'm hoping the little 'un likes them as well.
U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal Twitter account (@mtgreenee) has been permanently suspended for misinformation about COVID-19
I’ve made this point before. Isn’t anyone else worried about a major means if communication being restricted to politicians who agree with the owner of that channel.
Either Twitter is a publisher who can chose what to publish, or it is a medium for others communication with which case it can’t
If dangerous lies & hate speech are prohibited on a platform and most dangerous lies & hate speech come from MAGA loonies then MAGA loonies will inevitably bear the brunt of restrictions. I just can't get to seeing this as some worrying slippery slope towards the sort of sinister politically motivated censorship of free speech you get in (eg) China.
The problem is when someone is a credible candidate for high office and you restrict their ability to present their case.
Not very… democratic… is it
There are some much worse undemocratic actions in the US in favour of Trump. This rebalances it a bit.
That way lies madness
Fix the other problems instead. Don’t create new ones.
Politicians don't deserve special opt outs from the rest of us. If someone incites people to kill others then it shouldn't matter who they are for that to break the law.
Sure, if they break the law prosecute them. But that’s not what we are talking about
The same principle applies to private sector rules as much as it does to the law.
The media sector has always had different rules because of the intersection with the public sphere.
If the BBC, ITV and Sky plus Facebook and Twitter decided to ban any mention or broadcast of Kier Starmer would that be right? I say not.
If Starmer was consistently calling for kids to get kitchen knives and try balancing them on their heads, yes. But it would be up to those individual organisations to decide to no-platform the views. However, Starmer is such a public figure that they might be best just pointing and laughing. The anti-vaxxers who promote vax conspiracy theories are bordering on evil - as Wakefield was (and is) with MMR.
This is related to the Gerry Adams debacle in the 1970s/80s, which was by government mandate.
The issue is this Congresswoman who has just been banned plus Trump.
A random loon doesn’t matter. A credible candidate for elected office does
Hang-on... Twitter have a very clear policy regarding misinformation about Covid-19. Taylor Greene knows what those rules are, has consistently ignored them, has received several short-term bans but still carried on.
It would be no different to OGH banning me if I persistently broke the rules of this site.
Except
A) you are not running for office AFAIK PB is not a major source of political news and information for a material number of voters
Neither OGH nor twitter is any more obliged to give a platform to those who are "running for office" any more than the Daily Telegraph has to give air time to the Socialist Workers Party.
Nope. Twitter and Facebook (and the rest) are entirely different to any media outlet that we have seen, by orders of magnitude and dimension. The Daily Telegraph is not used and read by 5 billion people, the Daily Mirror is not the major media platform for every western politician alive. Nor has any previous media outfit had the instantaneous, aggressive, addictive quality of social media, which has so clearly coarsened our politics and increased its nastiness
You cannot simultaneously bemoan the rise of Trump and the growing threat to American democracy (as you rightly do) then say Oh social media can do what it likes. Trump used Twitter's unseemly power to fuel his bollocks, and even if he is now banned on a Twitter-whim other demagogues (of left and right and any religion) will do the same.
Social media needs to be reined in, taxed properly, and regulated; the giants are like the oil companies of the early 20th century (times a thousand): horrible monopolies/cartels with way too much power. The US government needs to stand up to Twitter and Zuckerberg the way it stood up to Standard Oil
Remember that Facebook and Twitter prohibited discussion of the lab leak theory for a year, and came quite close to successfully censoring forever the most plausible explanation of a plague that has killed 20 million people. This is Double Plus UnGood
I agree that Big Social shouldn't be able do what it likes. It should do its utmost to keep poison like Trump off its platforms. And if it won't do that job voluntarily, the govt needs to step in and make it.
i think you're joking or at least I hope you are. Government censorship is a giant leap beyond a private organisation deplatforming someone.
Exaggerating and emoting rather than joking. I'd like to see less poison & lies out there and I'm open to ways in which this can be accomplished. Eg regulation, legal jeopardy, whatever. I know it's difficult and I know it's complex but I'm not inclined to rule it out on a 'slippery slope' free speech argument. That doesn't resonate massively with me on this topic. The bigger imperative is less poison & lies. I think that's more important than a slightly raised risk of us trending to totalitarianism. This is how I both feel and see it.
Anything the government can do, imagine it in the control of the worst possible person.
How many people want free speech to be controlled by the current majority in Parliament?
Cute but I'm unmoved. The thought of passports being issued by Giles Coren scares me but doesn't make me wish to take that power away from government.
So I'm going to file with "the most terrifying words in the English language ... I'm from the government and I'm here to help".
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
A bit like the Chronicles of Narnia then.
Oh, is that so? I've only read TLTWATW, and had no wish to continue. At what point should I expect something tolerable to emerge?
I am reading them with my eldest right now. The third one (Voyages of the Dawn Treader) is much better written. The fourth is showing promise.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
A bit like the Chronicles of Narnia then.
Why do you say that? I would have thought LWW and PC were at least as good as the rest. TMN and SC are the weakest. HAHB is an oddity but I like it.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Do they have to be moved to covid wards or something?
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
She still has her official congressional Twitter account.
It was just her rule breaking conspiracy theory nut job account that was banned.
She is still on Twitter.
And Trump?
Does Trump still hold an elected position? Is he standing for election at the current time?
He is very likely to be a candidate for high office. Fundamentally Twitter is putting its thumb on the scale of democracy.
Like Nick Griffin, the way to destroy Trump is to defeat him
Do you think the same regarding the very large number of accounts banned or shadow banned on PB?
No - pb doesn’t influence elections on the same way.
A better parallel might be candidates or party officials trying to influence elections by through money at the betting platforms. If it wasn’t for the fact that people on here make so much out of them I might be tempted to say that is a bad thing…
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Do they have to be moved to covid wards or something?
These are people who are in hospital for non covid reasons, e.g. broken leg, get tested for covid and then have to be treated in a covid secure environment to ensure that they don't infect vulnerable uninfected patients.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Anyone who is not primarily there for COVID is incidental, although these cause issues too. But yes, it would be helpful to have information on how many of each category make up the daily admissions. I've long thought that amazing as the data available is, there is a lot more there that would be useful to know. I just hope that those who make decisions DO have thus information in a timely manner.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
The problem is that we're keeping track of two different things with one statistical series.
1. Is Covid/Omega a disease that puts most of those affected in hospital? Probably not, and the statistic doesn't tell us, so we shouldn't use it to try to answer the question.
2. Is the number of covid cases, all of which have to be isolated, putting a big strain on hospitals? Yes, and the static is relevant for that. Perhaps it should be called "Covid hospital cases" to make it clearer.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
A bit like the Chronicles of Narnia then.
Oh, is that so? I've only read TLTWATW, and had no wish to continue. At what point should I expect something tolerable to emerge?
I am reading them with my eldest right now. The third one (Voyages of the Dawn Treader) is much better written. The fourth is showing promise.
Glad you skipped #3… the Horse and his Boy (Dawn Treader is #5)
U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal Twitter account (@mtgreenee) has been permanently suspended for misinformation about COVID-19
I’ve made this point before. Isn’t anyone else worried about a major means if communication being restricted to politicians who agree with the owner of that channel.
Either Twitter is a publisher who can chose what to publish, or it is a medium for others communication with which case it can’t
If dangerous lies & hate speech are prohibited on a platform and most dangerous lies & hate speech come from MAGA loonies then MAGA loonies will inevitably bear the brunt of restrictions. I just can't get to seeing this as some worrying slippery slope towards the sort of sinister politically motivated censorship of free speech you get in (eg) China.
The problem is when someone is a credible candidate for high office and you restrict their ability to present their case.
Not very… democratic… is it
There are some much worse undemocratic actions in the US in favour of Trump. This rebalances it a bit.
That way lies madness
Fix the other problems instead. Don’t create new ones.
Politicians don't deserve special opt outs from the rest of us. If someone incites people to kill others then it shouldn't matter who they are for that to break the law.
Sure, if they break the law prosecute them. But that’s not what we are talking about
The same principle applies to private sector rules as much as it does to the law.
The media sector has always had different rules because of the intersection with the public sphere.
If the BBC, ITV and Sky plus Facebook and Twitter decided to ban any mention or broadcast of Kier Starmer would that be right? I say not.
If Starmer was consistently calling for kids to get kitchen knives and try balancing them on their heads, yes. But it would be up to those individual organisations to decide to no-platform the views. However, Starmer is such a public figure that they might be best just pointing and laughing. The anti-vaxxers who promote vax conspiracy theories are bordering on evil - as Wakefield was (and is) with MMR.
This is related to the Gerry Adams debacle in the 1970s/80s, which was by government mandate.
The issue is this Congresswoman who has just been banned plus Trump.
A random loon doesn’t matter. A credible candidate for elected office does
Hang-on... Twitter have a very clear policy regarding misinformation about Covid-19. Taylor Greene knows what those rules are, has consistently ignored them, has received several short-term bans but still carried on.
It would be no different to OGH banning me if I persistently broke the rules of this site.
Except
A) you are not running for office AFAIK PB is not a major source of political news and information for a material number of voters
Neither OGH nor twitter is any more obliged to give a platform to those who are "running for office" any more than the Daily Telegraph has to give air time to the Socialist Workers Party.
Nope. Twitter and Facebook (and the rest) are entirely different to any media outlet that we have seen, by orders of magnitude and dimension. The Daily Telegraph is not used and read by 5 billion people, the Daily Mirror is not the major media platform for every western politician alive. Nor has any previous media outfit had the instantaneous, aggressive, addictive quality of social media, which has so clearly coarsened our politics and increased its nastiness
You cannot simultaneously bemoan the rise of Trump and the growing threat to American democracy (as you rightly do) then say Oh social media can do what it likes. Trump used Twitter's unseemly power to fuel his bollocks, and even if he is now banned on a Twitter-whim other demagogues (of left and right and any religion) will do the same.
Social media needs to be reined in, taxed properly, and regulated; the giants are like the oil companies of the early 20th century (times a thousand): horrible monopolies/cartels with way too much power. The US government needs to stand up to Twitter and Zuckerberg the way it stood up to Standard Oil
Remember that Facebook and Twitter prohibited discussion of the lab leak theory for a year, and came quite close to successfully censoring forever the most plausible explanation of a plague that has killed 20 million people. This is Double Plus UnGood
I agree that Big Social shouldn't be able do what it likes. It should do its utmost to keep poison like Trump off its platforms. And if it won't do that job voluntarily, the govt needs to step in and make it.
i think you're joking or at least I hope you are. Government censorship is a giant leap beyond a private organisation deplatforming someone.
Exaggerating and emoting rather than joking. I'd like to see less poison & lies out there and I'm open to ways in which this can be accomplished. Eg regulation, legal jeopardy, whatever. I know it's difficult and I know it's complex but I'm not inclined to rule it out on a 'slippery slope' free speech argument. That doesn't resonate massively with me on this topic. The bigger imperative is less poison & lies. I think that's more important than a slightly raised risk of us trending to totalitarianism. This is how I both feel and see it.
Anything the government can do, imagine it in the control of the worst possible person.
How many people want free speech to be controlled by the current majority in Parliament?
Cute but I'm unmoved. The thought of passports being issued by Giles Coren scares me but doesn't make me wish to take that power away from government.
So I'm going to file with "the most terrifying words in the English language ... I'm from the government and I'm here to help".
Revolving bow tie chuckle pipe.
Perhaps a brief perusal of the history of free speech in the UK?
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Fair enough. I read them as an adult and I'm judging it by adult standards. Which is normal. Few adults are big fans of Baby Shark even if the toddler loves it.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
Getting that wrong doesn't mean they're getting this wrong.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
.. and the reason for using the 28 day cutoff was not that it was especially medically significant, but that a 28 days cutoff made the death figures fairly close to the correct* figure.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
I don't think Leon ever went for OMICRON THE DECAPITATOR, more's the pity.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Really? I thought the first 3 were really quite good fun. Everything after the Goblet of Fire needed heavy editing.
Watched the Harry Potter 20 reunion. Am I being unreasonable to find it appalling that Jo Rowling was excluded from it?
I thought it pretty shocking over the last year that those who entirely owe their riches and their success to Rowling have been so quick to step up and attack her.
What's wrong with that? We don't live in a feudal state where you owe fealty to the lord and lady of the manor. She has her point of view, they have theirs, nobody needs to be quiet because of a past commercial relationship.
What's wrong with it is that it is biting the hand that feeds you. I happen to believe there is such a thing as loyalty. And we are not talking about someone who has committed a crime or done something terribly wrong. Just someone who has a different opinion on an extremely opaque question of society. I would have thought that they might at least have kept a dignified silence rather than making outright attacks.
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
"But someone wiser than me saw something in it"
I believe she was turned down by everybody who was anybody in publishing at the time. Until Bloomsbury. Their profits have been good to stunning ever since.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
Choosing to go to bat for Marjorie Taylor Green out of all 435 members of the house of reps is not gonna be a good look for you Charles.
I’ve no idea who she is, and know nothing about her except that apparently space lasers are responsible for forest fires 😂
The principle remains is that all candidates for elections in a free country have an equal right to be heard. If they break the law prosecute then. But to prevent them using a major channel of political communication is to distort elections
You are doing the thing where you defend a general principle based on the newspaper headline of a specific case and everyone talks about the specific case that justifies the action whilst you are ignorant of the specifics.
Yes. I’m defending the principle of free elections. I don’t know who MTG is and don’t really give a shit.
This is not interfering with 'free elections'. The companies have rules - sensible rules, by the sound of it - and are hopefully applying those rules uniformly. If they applied them very unevenly you may have more of a point; but it's up to you to provide evidence of that in this discussion.
It is. Twitter is a key part of a former POTUS’s election technique. They have made the decision to ban him. How anyone can claim that is not going to impact on the election result I don’t know.
So, if it is going to impact, you are really comfortable with giving a private company that power?
Absolutely - as long as the rules are fairly implemented to all. If Trump did make Twitter a key part of his election technique, he should have looked at their rules and operated within them. If he got banned having broken those rules, then it's his own fault.
Those people who got censored or suspended for discussing lab leak as a hypothesis on Twitter and Facebook, for a year, what rule were they breaking?
Was it the rule that This Upsets China?
Or some other rule? Do tell
Can I have more details please?
Here. Tho quite why I have to spoon feed you this news is beyond me
"Facebook issued two statements in the past week relating to its treatment of “misinformation” — and they couldn’t have been more different.
The first was a single paragraph updating their policy on stories speculating that Covid-19 is a man-made virus — after almost every major media outlet, and yesterday even the British and American security services, finally confirmed that it is a feasible possibility.
“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts,” a Facebook spokesman said, “we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.”"
Thanks, I'll have a look at it when I've put the little 'un to bed.
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter: "I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice." "Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?" "NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Fair enough. I was feeling a bit feisty, apologies if I overdid it
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
All this is a bit like monarchists complaining that they don't like Prince Andrew. The point about morachy is that you don't have any say in the head of state. The point about private enterprise is that they can do what they like within the law.
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
Social media is different to ordinary newspapers and magazines. Utterly, utterly different, in scale and impact
U.S. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal Twitter account (@mtgreenee) has been permanently suspended for misinformation about COVID-19
I’ve made this point before. Isn’t anyone else worried about a major means if communication being restricted to politicians who agree with the owner of that channel.
Either Twitter is a publisher who can chose what to publish, or it is a medium for others communication with which case it can’t
If dangerous lies & hate speech are prohibited on a platform and most dangerous lies & hate speech come from MAGA loonies then MAGA loonies will inevitably bear the brunt of restrictions. I just can't get to seeing this as some worrying slippery slope towards the sort of sinister politically motivated censorship of free speech you get in (eg) China.
The problem is when someone is a credible candidate for high office and you restrict their ability to present their case.
Not very… democratic… is it
There are some much worse undemocratic actions in the US in favour of Trump. This rebalances it a bit.
That way lies madness
Fix the other problems instead. Don’t create new ones.
Politicians don't deserve special opt outs from the rest of us. If someone incites people to kill others then it shouldn't matter who they are for that to break the law.
Sure, if they break the law prosecute them. But that’s not what we are talking about
The same principle applies to private sector rules as much as it does to the law.
The media sector has always had different rules because of the intersection with the public sphere.
If the BBC, ITV and Sky plus Facebook and Twitter decided to ban any mention or broadcast of Kier Starmer would that be right? I say not.
If Starmer was consistently calling for kids to get kitchen knives and try balancing them on their heads, yes. But it would be up to those individual organisations to decide to no-platform the views. However, Starmer is such a public figure that they might be best just pointing and laughing. The anti-vaxxers who promote vax conspiracy theories are bordering on evil - as Wakefield was (and is) with MMR.
This is related to the Gerry Adams debacle in the 1970s/80s, which was by government mandate.
The issue is this Congresswoman who has just been banned plus Trump.
A random loon doesn’t matter. A credible candidate for elected office does
Hang-on... Twitter have a very clear policy regarding misinformation about Covid-19. Taylor Greene knows what those rules are, has consistently ignored them, has received several short-term bans but still carried on.
It would be no different to OGH banning me if I persistently broke the rules of this site.
Except
A) you are not running for office AFAIK PB is not a major source of political news and information for a material number of voters
Neither OGH nor twitter is any more obliged to give a platform to those who are "running for office" any more than the Daily Telegraph has to give air time to the Socialist Workers Party.
Nope. Twitter and Facebook (and the rest) are entirely different to any media outlet that we have seen, by orders of magnitude and dimension. The Daily Telegraph is not used and read by 5 billion people, the Daily Mirror is not the major media platform for every western politician alive. Nor has any previous media outfit had the instantaneous, aggressive, addictive quality of social media, which has so clearly coarsened our politics and increased its nastiness
You cannot simultaneously bemoan the rise of Trump and the growing threat to American democracy (as you rightly do) then say Oh social media can do what it likes. Trump used Twitter's unseemly power to fuel his bollocks, and even if he is now banned on a Twitter-whim other demagogues (of left and right and any religion) will do the same.
Social media needs to be reined in, taxed properly, and regulated; the giants are like the oil companies of the early 20th century (times a thousand): horrible monopolies/cartels with way too much power. The US government needs to stand up to Twitter and Zuckerberg the way it stood up to Standard Oil
Remember that Facebook and Twitter prohibited discussion of the lab leak theory for a year, and came quite close to successfully censoring forever the most plausible explanation of a plague that has killed 20 million people. This is Double Plus UnGood
I agree that Big Social shouldn't be able do what it likes. It should do its utmost to keep poison like Trump off its platforms. And if it won't do that job voluntarily, the govt needs to step in and make it.
i think you're joking or at least I hope you are. Government censorship is a giant leap beyond a private organisation deplatforming someone.
Exaggerating and emoting rather than joking. I'd like to see less poison & lies out there and I'm open to ways in which this can be accomplished. Eg regulation, legal jeopardy, whatever. I know it's difficult and I know it's complex but I'm not inclined to rule it out on a 'slippery slope' free speech argument. That doesn't resonate massively with me on this topic. The bigger imperative is less poison & lies. I think that's more important than a slightly raised risk of us trending to totalitarianism. This is how I both feel and see it.
Anything the government can do, imagine it in the control of the worst possible person.
How many people want free speech to be controlled by the current majority in Parliament?
Cute but I'm unmoved. The thought of passports being issued by Giles Coren scares me but doesn't make me wish to take that power away from government.
So I'm going to file with "the most terrifying words in the English language ... I'm from the government and I'm here to help".
Revolving bow tie chuckle pipe.
Perhaps a brief perusal of the history of free speech in the UK?
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Do they have to be moved to covid wards or something?
These are people who are in hospital for non covid reasons, e.g. broken leg, get tested for covid and then have to be treated in a covid secure environment to ensure that they don't infect vulnerable uninfected patients.
This is adding huge strain to staff loads etc.
In addition it greatly adds to mortality. A fractured neck of femur with covid has a 38% chance of dying within 30 days, more than 4 times the controls.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
I don't think Leon ever went for OMICRON THE DECAPITATOR, more's the pity.
I think he was trying quite hard last night with OMICRON THE BLEEDING FROM EVERY OROFICE.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Yes, I read them when very young, and loved them. Which I find mildly incomprehensible now.
People with Covid in hospital (for Covid, incidental Covid, or nosocomial) puts massive strains and pressures on health systems and services that are depleted right now coupled with staffing burn out after a very difficult two years.
Mechanical Ventilations and ICU admissions figures are of course important but not the only picture here.
I think it all depends, doesn't it? Unfortunately, you don't know till you've had kids how you will react to having them all day. My missus hated it even though she had been a kindergarten teacher. I loved it at weekends, and hated my job. So we swapped over. We were skint for a while while she trained up and earned what I did before. She worked. I looked after the kids and house. But it was the best thing we ever did. Never occurred to us that was what we should have done in the first place. Because we just didn't know. And there was some unconscious, ingrained sexism in there, too I confess.
I always wanted a big family and would have happily had a half dozen and Mrs Foxy too, but life doesn't always happen as planned.
I think the biggest change is the rising age of first Conception, which quite obviously reduces the time available for more. No question too that sleepless nights were tougher at 37 than 30. Mrs Foxy did most of the parenting, but we did tag team a lot. She worked nights and weekends, while I was in a research job with Fox Jr a baby, so free nights and weekends. It worked for us.
Some questions for @tlg86 on his chart of changes in fertility by SE Status:
1) are these figures adjusted for the size of these groups? For example there are far fewer long term unemployed, and more white collar workers than 1990.
2) The Conception rate for professionals is broadly stable over the period (presuming the denominator is unchanged) while others have dropped. Is that the other SE classes coming into line with the SE professionals? In other words, are the other classes merely coming into line with a change that had already occurred in SE1?
Sorry, just catching up as I’ve been - appropriately - helping my sister with her two kids.
The SE data are 2019 v 2014. It’s difficult to do denominators for it because it’s a household thing and, in any case, I think it’s only collected nationally in the census.
By the way, before 2012, it used to be done on the father’s SE status as women were considered to be staying at home!
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Do they have to be moved to covid wards or something?
These are people who are in hospital for non covid reasons, e.g. broken leg, get tested for covid and then have to be treated in a covid secure environment to ensure that they don't infect vulnerable uninfected patients.
This is adding huge strain to staff loads etc.
The problem is bed pressure. If you have a broken leg you have a standard recovery time before discharge. If you have the same plus COVID it puts your recovery time back. Because the body can't heal as efficiently. So. Just about any ailment means a longer stay when you add COVID on top.
I'm sure you must have seen Mr Ed and his mad crush on MTG in the past Charles. Next you'll be claiming you've never heard of the Squad.
I’ve not seen Mr Ed in a while
And don’t really like the squid nickname for Goldmans. Faintly redolent of anti-Semitic tropes of the past
Lol.
Squad not squid..
True - small screen on my phone and thought he was referring to the “Vampire Squid”.
At the risk of sounding like a superannuated judge what’s “the Squad”?
That's Citibank.
Shittybank? (No one ever said traders were original or funny). Goldmans is the Vampire Squid.
I thought they were usually referred too as Goldman Sucks?
Then we have -
Douche Bank Debit Suisse Royal Bank of Shit Moron Stanley JP Moron
etc etc...
The old ones were better
Bruno’s (Schroeder’s) The Scots (Flemings) Cubans (Kleinworts) The Pride of Lucifer (Morgan Grenfell)
Sadly the City has moved on from the days when a trolley would go round at a certain hour, signalling the end of the week with a glass of good port for the staff.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Do they have to be moved to covid wards or something?
These are people who are in hospital for non covid reasons, e.g. broken leg, get tested for covid and then have to be treated in a covid secure environment to ensure that they don't infect vulnerable uninfected patients.
This is adding huge strain to staff loads etc.
The problem is bed pressure. If you have a broken leg you have a standard recovery time before discharge. If you have the same plus COVID it puts your recovery time back. Because the body can't heal as efficiently. So. Just about any ailment means a longer stay when you add COVID on top.
But you need two wards now to treat those broken legs, in 2019 you only needed one.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
A bit like the Chronicles of Narnia then.
Oh, is that so? I've only read TLTWATW, and had no wish to continue. At what point should I expect something tolerable to emerge?
I am reading them with my eldest right now. The third one (Voyages of the Dawn Treader) is much better written. The fourth is showing promise.
I am suddenly very interested in the back story behind your username.
VotDT is only third in terms of the order they were written. It is fifth in chronological order of the series.
'Conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse also objected to the position of the EU flag: "Preside over Europe yes, erase French identity no!", she tweeted'
You're obsessed with France and the EU. It's a bit weird if I'm honest.
Hardly, this is the main news in France this evening, the removal of the Tricolour from the Arc de Triomphe and its replacement by the EU flag. All the main rightwing candidates, the far right Le Pen, Zemmour and the centre right Pecresse condemned it and the government was forced to back down and replace it.
The French presidential election is the biggest political event this year and this is supposed to be a politicalbetting site. More absurd is your questioning why there should be any mention of it on here!
"main news in France this evening" you what? It isn't even on the front page of lefigaro.fr.
and its a tiny sub-story on lemonde.
"main news in France this evening" christ.
Le Monde and Le Figaro's combined circulation is less than 1 million, Le Pen, Zemmour and Pecresse's tweets about the issue have gone to far more than that amongst their combined 2.9million twitter followers
Right. But far from "main news in France this evening". Main news on frother twitter maybe.
If Pecresse gets to the runoff and uses issues like this to get Le Pen and Zemmour supporters behind her, she will likely beat Macron
What's that got to do with whether this is the "main news in France this evening"?
The elitist Parisian media may be trying to ignore it but it has even made the frontpage of the BBC news and is uniting the right and rightwing social media in France and if the right unites in the spring it will likely beat Macron in the runoff
You really can't handle being called out for being wrong, can you?
I am not wrong, for the average Frenchman outside central Paris this will be the main news tonight
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Really? I thought the first 3 were really quite good fun. Everything after the Goblet of Fire needed heavy editing.
I'm more forgiving of bad writing than I am of bad ideas. And, for me, the worst ideas are the wish-fulfilment ones. Once we get past the overly fluffy plots and into the darker stuff, that's when it gets good, in my view.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Bank Holiday tomorrow so not surprising people are out and about. Are they doing inside stuff though? Like pubs and cafes or walking the heaths instead?
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
'Conservative candidate Valérie Pécresse also objected to the position of the EU flag: "Preside over Europe yes, erase French identity no!", she tweeted'
You're obsessed with France and the EU. It's a bit weird if I'm honest.
Hardly, this is the main news in France this evening, the removal of the Tricolour from the Arc de Triomphe and its replacement by the EU flag. All the main rightwing candidates, the far right Le Pen, Zemmour and the centre right Pecresse condemned it and the government was forced to back down and replace it.
The French presidential election is the biggest political event this year and this is supposed to be a politicalbetting site. More absurd is your questioning why there should be any mention of it on here!
"main news in France this evening" you what? It isn't even on the front page of lefigaro.fr.
and its a tiny sub-story on lemonde.
"main news in France this evening" christ.
Le Monde and Le Figaro's combined circulation is less than 1 million, Le Pen, Zemmour and Pecresse's tweets about the issue have gone to far more than that amongst their combined 2.9million twitter followers
Right. But far from "main news in France this evening". Main news on frother twitter maybe.
If Pecresse gets to the runoff and uses issues like this to get Le Pen and Zemmour supporters behind her, she will likely beat Macron
What's that got to do with whether this is the "main news in France this evening"?
The elitist Parisian media may be trying to ignore it but it has even made the frontpage of the BBC news and is uniting the right and rightwing social media in France and if the right unites in the spring it will likely beat Macron in the runoff
You really can't handle being called out for being wrong, can you?
I am not wrong, for the average Frenchman outside central Paris this will be the main news tonight
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Really? I thought the first 3 were really quite good fun. Everything after the Goblet of Fire needed heavy editing.
I'm more forgiving of bad writing than I am of bad ideas. And, for me, the worst ideas are the wish-fulfilment ones. Once we get past the overly fluffy plots and into the darker stuff, that's when it gets good, in my view.
I think what I like best is that Harry potter isn't actually that powerful a wizard. Sure he's competent, but it would be tempting to have him almost the equal of Voldemort. That's not done, and the books are better for it.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Anyone who is not primarily there for COVID is incidental, although these cause issues too. But yes, it would be helpful to have information on how many of each category make up the daily admissions. I've long thought that amazing as the data available is, there is a lot more there that would be useful to know. I just hope that those who make decisions DO have thus information in a timely manner.
Thanks. It seems completely bonkers that the numbers aren’t sequestered daily in this fashion.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
.. and the reason for using the 28 day cutoff was not that it was especially medically significant, but that a 28 days cutoff made the death figures fairly close to the correct* figure.
*Yes, I know.....
Yes the 28 day rule will lead to errors, but on the other hand many covid victims take longer than 28 days to die. It is an approximation.
The other criteria, death certificates and excess deaths, give different numbers but are all fairly congruous. The 28 day cut off is a reasonable approximation, and one that permits international comparisons.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Bank Holiday tomorrow so not surprising people are out and about. Are they doing inside stuff though? Like pubs and cafes or walking the heaths instead?
Plenty of inside stuff, as well. Not like a rammed Christmas Saturday pre-Covid, sure, but still quite a few
The large cafe in Kenwood House had big queues and every table taken, inside and out
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
... in your humble opinion, which is clearly piss-poor.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Very often we are all back at work on January 2nd but the quirk of the calendar this year means it'll be January 4th before many return so in effect another long weekend for most.
The unseasonably mild weather probably helped this morning - may just hold tomorrow before something more seasonal this way comes.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
But then some people probably die more than 28 days after being tested, or weren't tested at all (particularly in the early days). Although you would hope that if someone dies in hospital after several weeks on ventilation they will go down as a Covid victim, however long ago their test was.
28 days was picked because it it kind of balanced the over counting - died with covid, but not of it - with the under counting - long term covid patients.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Bank Holiday tomorrow so not surprising people are out and about. Are they doing inside stuff though? Like pubs and cafes or walking the heaths instead?
Plenty of inside stuff, as well. Not like a rammed Christmas Saturday pre-Covid, sure, but still quite a few
The large cafe in Kenwood House had big queues and every table taken, inside and out
Good to hear. Sounds like the Great British Public, as Boris would no doubt call them, has made its collective mind up about post-xmas omi fears. Keep calm and carry on...
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Bank Holiday tomorrow so not surprising people are out and about. Are they doing inside stuff though? Like pubs and cafes or walking the heaths instead?
Plenty of inside stuff, as well. Not like a rammed Christmas Saturday pre-Covid, sure, but still quite a few
The large cafe in Kenwood House had big queues and every table taken, inside and out
I don't understand how anyone can be arsed queuing for a cafe. Never have.
The whole romance and appeal of a cafe is simply waltzing in from the cold, sitting down in the warmth, and tucking into a conversation or a book. Not waiting for an hour in a queue to have half a sandwich for £10 and then being hurried away so someone else can do the same.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
The only one of the Beatles with any real talent was Yoko.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
... in your humble opinion, which is clearly piss-poor.
Tra la, O bla di, oh michelle ma belle,let's write songs about class A drugs which are so twee and gutless they can be explained away as kindergarten singalongs.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Really? I thought the first 3 were really quite good fun. Everything after the Goblet of Fire needed heavy editing.
I'm more forgiving of bad writing than I am of bad ideas. And, for me, the worst ideas are the wish-fulfilment ones. Once we get past the overly fluffy plots and into the darker stuff, that's when it gets good, in my view.
I think what I like best is that Harry potter isn't actually that powerful a wizard. Sure he's competent, but it would be tempting to have him almost the equal of Voldemort. That's not done, and the books are better for it.
Standard fantasy fiction. The hero has to be someone the reader can identify with.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Yes, I read them when very young, and loved them. Which I find mildly incomprehensible now.
When I worked in a bookshop a customer asked me to recommend a book for a child who had lost a parent. I recommended the Harry Potter books because however imperfect they are they're great at dealing with difficult themes in ways children can relate to.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Anyone who is not primarily there for COVID is incidental, although these cause issues too. But yes, it would be helpful to have information on how many of each category make up the daily admissions. I've long thought that amazing as the data available is, there is a lot more there that would be useful to know. I just hope that those who make decisions DO have thus information in a timely manner.
Thanks. It seems completely bonkers that the numbers aren’t sequestered daily in this fashion.
It is one of many things about the data.
For an even more ridiculous example - the 18-64 banding for hospital admissions.....
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
The only one of the Beatles with any real talent was Yoko.
I quite like Harrison, Any Road and My Sweet Lord frinstance. Frustrating for him to be shackled to such a bunch of hebephrenic dirgemeisters.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Bank Holiday tomorrow so not surprising people are out and about. Are they doing inside stuff though? Like pubs and cafes or walking the heaths instead?
Plenty of inside stuff, as well. Not like a rammed Christmas Saturday pre-Covid, sure, but still quite a few
The large cafe in Kenwood House had big queues and every table taken, inside and out
I don't understand how anyone can be arsed queuing for a cafe. Never have.
The whole romance and appeal of a cafe is simply waltzing in from the cold, sitting down in the warmth, and tucking into a conversation or a book. Not waiting for an hour in a queue to have half a sandwich for £10 and then being hurried away so someone else can do the same.
It's a really big space so queues don't last long, even if they are sizeable
It is also hugely charming, and does nice food, booze and coffee, and afterwards you can walk out onto the Kenwood gardens and the wider Heath, and that superb view, or you can nip inside Kenwood itself, to look at its exquisitely tiny yet world class art collection (Vermeer, Gainsborough, Rembrandt).
It is one of my favourite places on earth. It is notably hard to be unhappy in Kenwood
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
... in your humble opinion, which is clearly piss-poor.
Tra la, O bla di, oh michelle ma belle,let's write songs about class A drugs which are so twee and gutless they can be explained away as kindergarten singalongs.
Otherwise good point.
Paul: Hey John, I've started on a new song: Love love me do You know I love you... what rhymes with "do" and "you"?
John: try "true"
Paul: I'll always be true hey that's great. I need another one though
"It’s not the police’s job to shut down political debate. They should stick to solving crime Sonia Sodha The appeals court has rightly upheld Harry Miller’s freedom to express his views"
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a poisonous, gun-toting fascist who advocates violence in the pursuit of political ends. She's an anti-semitic QAnon conspiracy theorist, Covid-denier and anti-vaxxer. She still claims Trump won the 2020 election and had it stolen from him. She supported the Capitol insurrection. In this country, her free speech would be legally curtailed under various laws relating to incitement to racial hatred, violence etc. It's remarkable that Twitter gives her a platform at all.
She should be returned to the sewer from whence she sprang. Sod free speech, if this is what it means. She uses it in an effort to stamp on other people's liberties.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
The only one of the Beatles with any real talent was Yoko.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Really? I thought the first 3 were really quite good fun. Everything after the Goblet of Fire needed heavy editing.
I'm more forgiving of bad writing than I am of bad ideas. And, for me, the worst ideas are the wish-fulfilment ones. Once we get past the overly fluffy plots and into the darker stuff, that's when it gets good, in my view.
I think what I like best is that Harry potter isn't actually that powerful a wizard. Sure he's competent, but it would be tempting to have him almost the equal of Voldemort. That's not done, and the books are better for it.
Standard fantasy fiction. The hero has to be someone the reader can identify with.
Yes, in some ways formulaic, but undoubtedly very, very good at it. Just look at the sales and the fanbase.
So to summarise, according to MaxPB, almost half of covid admissions (soon to be more than half) are ‘incidental’ i.e. they are nothing to do with covid at the point of admission and in many cases are simply acquired from other people in hospital.
A nontrivial proportion of incidental hospitalisations are therefore likely to be asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic, are they not, as Omicron is a very mild disease for many?
Asymptomatic ‘hospitalisations’ is a bizarre concept. Yet basic logic suggests there is such a thing.
That strikes me as extremely important, and highly worthy of highlighting to the public, the points above about covid wards and recovery times notwithstanding.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
We've got a lot of post Xmas socialising lined up, especially now that most of our social circle has had Omicron. I wouldn't be surprised if 30-40% of 20-40 year olds in London have just had or currently have it. We've got friends over tomorrow, firing up my new outdoor pizza oven for the first time, Wednesday we've got dinner at Ivy Asia with some of my ex colleagues that we're really good friends with, Friday we're going for a scummy night in the Black Heart in Camden with the same people as tomorrow, Saturday brunch at Lantana and back out in the evening in Camden.
Feel like we're doing our bit for London's economy!
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
Wikipedia claims Decca choose The Tremeloes over the Beatles at that time.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
Do they have to be moved to covid wards or something?
These are people who are in hospital for non covid reasons, e.g. broken leg, get tested for covid and then have to be treated in a covid secure environment to ensure that they don't infect vulnerable uninfected patients.
This is adding huge strain to staff loads etc.
In addition it greatly adds to mortality. A fractured neck of femur with covid has a 38% chance of dying within 30 days, more than 4 times the controls.
Is that data from post-vaccines, or pre-vaccines? Is it controlled for vaccinated and unvaccinated?
If that data was pre vaccines then it may not be we relevant today.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes, it is written really badly, but it is superbly plotted. In fact it is a masterpiece of plotting, beautifully knitted together, with puzzles and cliffhangers. It deserved to earn the money it did
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
... in your humble opinion, which is clearly piss-poor.
Tra la, O bla di, oh michelle ma belle,let's write songs about class A drugs which are so twee and gutless they can be explained away as kindergarten singalongs.
Otherwise good point.
Paul: Hey John, I've started on a new song: Love love me do You know I love you... what rhymes with "do" and "you"?
John: try "true"
Paul: I'll always be true hey that's great. I need another one though
John: there are no others. Just use "do" again.
Paul: we're gonna be so rich
Should have used Lennon's suggestion to Epstein: 'Call your memoirs "Queer jew." '
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
Wikipedia claims Decca choose The Tremeloes over the Beatles at that time.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
We've got a lot of post Xmas socialising lined up, especially now that most of our social circle has had Omicron. I wouldn't be surprised if 30-40% of 20-40 year olds in London have just had or currently have it. We've got friends over tomorrow, firing up my new outdoor pizza oven for the first time, Wednesday we've got dinner at Ivy Asia with some of my ex colleagues that we're really good friends with, Friday we're going for a scummy night in the Black Heart in Camden with the same people as tomorrow, Saturday brunch at Lantana and back out in the evening in Camden.
Feel like we're doing our bit for London's economy!
That was the feeling I got today. A lot of people thinking: Phew, Christmas is over, we stayed at home for a week beforehand to keep the lurgy away from granny, now let's have fun (and without the intense family pressure of Xmas itself). And yet the grannies were out, in droves, as well
Plus a LOT of young people who have clearly had Omicron and now, quite frankly, don't give a fuck. And nor should they. Go forth and multiply!
Perhaps January won't be quite the nightmare for hospitality that has been feared? We shall see
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes I have. Wished I hadn't bothered. It's even worse than the Genesis Secret.
Just having a look through the hospitalisation data and comparing it to last year. At the same point last year in hospital numbers rose from 7k to 11k in 9 days, this time it's gone from 7k to 13k in 9 days. That seems bad yet looking at the mechanical ventilation stats last time it went from about 1500 to just around 2200 over the same exact period, so no lag at all in that rise, this time it's not really moved at all, staying at around 750-780.
This is real time evidence that Omicron severity in a vaccinated population is significantly lower than Alpha was last year in an unvaccinated population (which seems obvious, but I've seen plenty of blue tick wankers still try and cast doubt on it). The other indication (though not hard evidence, we'll get that on Thursday) is that we're seeing a very high proportion of incidental hospital admissions, that is people who require treatment but also test positive. We could be well over 50% incidental admissions at this rate, in fact if we include non-overnight stays it may even be over 70%.
Is it possible to get a total "in hospital" figure that we can compare to 2019? Start to look at hospital caseload like we do excess deaths.
Yes, NHS England has got overall occupancy and overall admissions stats released weekly, again this is one of the series that isn't flashing red like it was last year and why NHS people are much more relaxed about this than the blue tick losers and media types pushing for lockdown.
I find the ‘incidental’ admissions thing utterly baffling.
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
No. You are absolutely right. Bear in mind also that as far as I understand it if someone tests positive for covid then dies of a heart attack or accidental decapitation then they still go down as a covid death. (Died after having tested positive for covid in the last 28 days). As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago my cousin died of long term cancer but is down as a covid death.
.. and the reason for using the 28 day cutoff was not that it was especially medically significant, but that a 28 days cutoff made the death figures fairly close to the correct* figure.
*Yes, I know.....
Yes the 28 day rule will lead to errors, but on the other hand many covid victims take longer than 28 days to die. It is an approximation.
The other criteria, death certificates and excess deaths, give different numbers but are all fairly congruous. The 28 day cut off is a reasonable approximation, and one that permits international comparisons.
This international comparison myth is remarkably widespread.
It only allows international comparisons if other nations are doing comparable levels of testing surely? And we know next to no other nation is.
Which is why our deaths within 28 days is higher than our excess deaths, while the opposite is the case for almost every other nation.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
Wikipedia claims Decca choose The Tremeloes over the Beatles at that time.
The who?
Some shitty band from Liverpool. Had a few hits in the 60s and then broke up. One of them went onto bigger and better things, doing the voices for Thomas the Tank Engine.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes, it is written really badly, but it is superbly plotted. In fact it is a masterpiece of plotting, beautifully knitted together, with puzzles and cliffhangers. It deserved to earn the money it did
Really? I would have said its plotting veered from the asinine to the merely implausible.
The first bit was a man being shot in the stomach and then spending lots of time running around leaving far-fetched clues before lying down to die having written an epitaph that made no sense at all, to be translated by an expert in French art who spoke no French.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
We've got a lot of post Xmas socialising lined up, especially now that most of our social circle has had Omicron. I wouldn't be surprised if 30-40% of 20-40 year olds in London have just had or currently have it. We've got friends over tomorrow, firing up my new outdoor pizza oven for the first time, Wednesday we've got dinner at Ivy Asia with some of my ex colleagues that we're really good friends with, Friday we're going for a scummy night in the Black Heart in Camden with the same people as tomorrow, Saturday brunch at Lantana and back out in the evening in Camden.
Feel like we're doing our bit for London's economy!
That was the feeling I got today. A lot of people thinking: Phew, Christmas is over, we stayed at home for a week beforehand to keep the lurgy away from granny, now let's have fun (and without the intense family pressure of Xmas itself). And yet the grannies were out, in droves, as well
Plus a LOT of young people who have clearly had Omicron and now, quite frankly, don't give a fuck. And nor should they. Go forth and multiply!
Perhaps January won't be quite the nightmare for hospitality that has been feared? We shall see
One of the reasons there wont be a lockdown announced next week after some kind of crisis COBRA meeting with Gove drooling and wailing about death is that no one will bloody do it.
We're less than 48 hours into the new year but already something seems to have changed.
Two articles in the left-of-centre press arguing against lockdowns to some extent (one in the Guardian and one in the New Statesman), and now an Observer/Guardian article saying the police shouldn't be getting involved in freedom of speech debates.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
I imagine the Decca Accounts department felt a little differently
I said, merit. I mean, The Da Vinci Code made squillions. Have you read it?
Yes I have. Wished I hadn't bothered. It's even worse than the Genesis Secret.
The San greal = sang real thing is the greatest bit of textual criticism in history, but it wasn't original.
“There is an attempt to make out that the worst is over. But, I think he is finished, in my view. I think there is a complete turnaround in how he has been perceived. He was seen as this amiable rascal, but now he is seen as a callous and sinister cheat."
Yep. Said so the other week. He always was seen as a lovable rogue. Now he isn't lovable.
Anyway, isn't the main creative force behind the Harry Potter books JRR Tolkien?
No. Nothing in common at all. The genesis is CS Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yay for me as a trendspotter: my eldest son was born pretty much the day the first book was published, and my eccentric aunt gave us a (I weep to say this) hardback copy of the first print run of the first edition, because she had read a rave review in the Spectator and thought we should read it to him. The book is lost, but when I read it at the time I thought: wtf is this snobbish 1950s crap about fantasy boarding school life, who ever thought publishing this was a good idea?
I'm kind of amazed the early books got published. They're trash. But someone wiser than me saw something in it, because the later books are really very good. Derivative and imperfect, but still very good.
Supply teaching anecdote. Turned up at a rough, rough school in Manchester. Told I'm teaching all the Year 8 English that day. They have to read this book. Feared the bloody worst. First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day. They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it. Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Pity the editors at the publishers that - notoriously - REJECTED the Harry Potter books. Like the guy at Decca who turned down the Beatles
Quite right in both cases, on grounds of merit
... in your humble opinion, which is clearly piss-poor.
Tra la, O bla di, oh michelle ma belle,let's write songs about class A drugs which are so twee and gutless they can be explained away as kindergarten singalongs.
Otherwise good point.
Between 1964 and 1969 the Beatles revolutionised popular music. There's never been such a rapid change in such a short space of time.
Comments
But a word to the wise; there is nothing wrong with asking for links, if someone apparently knows more on a subject than you do.
You sound a bit like a drunken man in a gutter:
"I claim the world is run by a cartel of hungry mice."
"Oh, that's interesting. Can I know more?"
"NO! How dare you aske me for more information, you fetid bag of ball-cheese!"
Then we have -
Douche Bank
Debit Suisse
Royal Bank of Shit
Moron Stanley
JP Moron
etc etc...
So I'm going to file with "the most terrifying words in the English language ... I'm from the government and I'm here to help".
Revolving bow tie chuckle pipe.
I just get quite angry when people say Twitter and Facebook are judiciously "censoring misinformation about Covid" when for a year they were actively PURVEYING misinformation on the most fundamental level, by censoring info which embarrasses the Chinese government on the likely origins of Covid19. ie the lab in Wuhan
It is equivalent to a newspaper in the 1930s printing favourable crap about Hitler's racial policies. That kind of stuff can make a man a bit punchy
But I’ll give you pride, greed, envy, wrath, lust and gluttony
Open to being convinced on the full house
These are people who acquired a covid infection while in hospital, right? Or who went into hospital for something other than covid and who subsequently failed a covid test while in hospital?
It is not clear to me why these should be counted as covid hospitalisations at all, as by definition they haven’t been admitted to hospital because of covid.
Am I missing something here?
But "Douche Bank" seems like the right turn of phrase for a bank whose genius move was re-financing Donald Fucking Trump. Repeatedly.
First class came I handed them out. And they read. No talking, no pissing about. An audible tut when the bell went. 5 lessons passed like that. Highest to lowest set alike. £160 smackers stolen that day.
They aren't trash. They are perfectly pitched at their age group. That's why someone published them. Because their daughter loved the first after they had rejected it.
Adults didn't. Till after they became huge.
Bruno’s (Schroeder’s)
The Scots (Flemings)
Cubans (Kleinworts)
The Pride of Lucifer (Morgan Grenfell)
A better parallel might be candidates or party officials trying to influence elections by through money at the betting platforms. If it wasn’t for the fact that people on here make so much out of them I might be tempted to say that is a bad thing…
This is adding huge strain to staff loads etc.
1. Is Covid/Omega a disease that puts most of those affected in hospital? Probably not, and the statistic doesn't tell us, so we shouldn't use it to try to answer the question.
2. Is the number of covid cases, all of which have to be isolated, putting a big strain on hospitals? Yes, and the static is relevant for that. Perhaps it should be called "Covid hospital cases" to make it clearer.
*Yes, I know.....
..
Is that problematic? Should they be constrained by rules of fairness and social conscience? Sure, as the left have said for many years. And hello to our new Corbynistas, Charles and Leon.
I believe she was turned down by everybody who was anybody in publishing at the time. Until Bloomsbury. Their profits have been good to stunning ever since.
London was oddly bustling today. I expected a post NYE torpor but no. Camden Market was rammed, likewise Muswell Hill. Huge queues in shops. Busy pubs and even a few busy restaurants (great to see)
Then I spent the arvo on the Heath at Kenwood with my eldest daughter and her dog, and much fun it was. Happy is the father who gets on with his kids (at least for today). That was also rammed
So an unexpectedly buoyant mood...
Obligatory mask report: almost 100% in shops now. And a lot more people are wearing masks as they walk the streets - or even the Heath - which seems insane to me, but there it is. These people were once oddities now they are 10-15% of pedestrians in North London, on the evidence I saw
I hope this does not persist. I detest the masks
Which I find mildly incomprehensible now.
Mechanical Ventilations and ICU admissions figures are of course important but not the only picture here.
The SE data are 2019 v 2014. It’s difficult to do denominators for it because it’s a household thing and, in any case, I think it’s only collected nationally in the census.
By the way, before 2012, it used to be done on the father’s SE status as women were considered to be staying at home!
If you have the same plus COVID it puts your recovery time back. Because the body can't heal as efficiently.
So. Just about any ailment means a longer stay when you add COVID on top.
VotDT is only third in terms of the order they were written. It is fifth in chronological order of the series.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jan/02/leeds-bed-poverty-crisis-bex-wilson-zarach
The other criteria, death certificates and excess deaths, give different numbers but are all fairly congruous. The 28 day cut off is a reasonable approximation, and one that permits international comparisons.
The large cafe in Kenwood House had big queues and every table taken, inside and out
The unseasonably mild weather probably helped this morning - may just hold tomorrow before something more seasonal this way comes.
This is why on the dashboard it gives deaths with COVID on the death certificate - https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/deaths#card-weekly_deaths_with_covid-19_on_the_death_certificate_by_date_registered - among other stats.
The whole romance and appeal of a cafe is simply waltzing in from the cold, sitting down in the warmth, and tucking into a conversation or a book. Not waiting for an hour in a queue to have half a sandwich for £10 and then being hurried away so someone else can do the same.
Otherwise good point.
For an even more ridiculous example - the 18-64 banding for hospital admissions.....
It is also hugely charming, and does nice food, booze and coffee, and afterwards you can walk out onto the Kenwood gardens and the wider Heath, and that superb view, or you can nip inside Kenwood itself, to look at its exquisitely tiny yet world class art collection (Vermeer, Gainsborough, Rembrandt).
It is one of my favourite places on earth. It is notably hard to be unhappy in Kenwood
Love love me do
You know I love you...
what rhymes with "do" and "you"?
John: try "true"
Paul: I'll always be true hey that's great. I need another one though
John: there are no others. Just use "do" again.
Paul: we're gonna be so rich
Sonia Sodha
The appeals court has rightly upheld Harry Miller’s freedom to express his views"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/02/policing-sex-and-gender-debate-worrying-freedom-of-expression
Marjorie Taylor Greene is a poisonous, gun-toting fascist who advocates violence in the pursuit of political ends. She's an anti-semitic QAnon conspiracy theorist, Covid-denier and anti-vaxxer. She still claims Trump won the 2020 election and had it stolen from him. She supported the Capitol insurrection. In this country, her free speech would be legally curtailed under various laws relating to incitement to racial hatred, violence etc. It's remarkable that Twitter gives her a platform at all.
I don't think this is too hyperbolic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Taylor_Greene.
She should be returned to the sewer from whence she sprang. Sod free speech, if this is what it means. She uses it in an effort to stamp on other people's liberties.
A nontrivial proportion of incidental hospitalisations are therefore likely to be asymptomatic or only mildly symptomatic, are they not, as Omicron is a very mild disease for many?
Asymptomatic ‘hospitalisations’ is a bizarre concept. Yet basic logic suggests there is such a thing.
That strikes me as extremely important, and highly worthy of highlighting to the public, the points above about covid wards and recovery times notwithstanding.
Feel like we're doing our bit for London's economy!
If that data was pre vaccines then it may not be we relevant today.
Lovable rascals
ETA note to younger readers: different Epstein.
Plus a LOT of young people who have clearly had Omicron and now, quite frankly, don't give a fuck. And nor should they. Go forth and multiply!
Perhaps January won't be quite the nightmare for hospitality that has been feared? We shall see
It only allows international comparisons if other nations are doing comparable levels of testing surely? And we know next to no other nation is.
Which is why our deaths within 28 days is higher than our excess deaths, while the opposite is the case for almost every other nation.
The first bit was a man being shot in the stomach and then spending lots of time running around leaving far-fetched clues before lying down to die having written an epitaph that made no sense at all, to be translated by an expert in French art who spoke no French.
And it got worse after that...
Two articles in the left-of-centre press arguing against lockdowns to some extent (one in the Guardian and one in the New Statesman), and now an Observer/Guardian article saying the police shouldn't be getting involved in freedom of speech debates.