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MAYBE BABY: POPULATION POLITICS PART 2 – politicalbetting.com

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  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Foxy said:

    Charles said:

    dixiedean said:

    Charles said:

    Just for information (Charles?).

    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.

    Those who would give up liberty for a measure of security deserve neither
    This quote is always trotted out.
    It is arrant nonsense.
    Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet… Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet….

    Yep. Going with Ben Franklin
    Did you read the link to see it in context? Or do you dispute the context?

    https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century?t=1641156675923
    I was being lazy when I originally responded. (I’ve read the npr article in the past).

    The point is that sunlight destroys the malign idiots.
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Foxy said:

    Charles said:

    dixiedean said:

    Charles said:

    Just for information (Charles?).

    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.

    Those who would give up liberty for a measure of security deserve neither
    This quote is always trotted out.
    It is arrant nonsense.
    Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet… Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet….

    Yep. Going with Ben Franklin
    Did you read the link to see it in context? Or do you dispute the context?

    https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century?t=1641156675923
    I was being lazy when I originally responded. (I’ve read the npr article in the past).

    The point is that sunlight destroys the malign idiots.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    Carnyx said:

    jonny83 said:

    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 stand to be corrected, but I believe there is still a great need for a COVID treatment protocol at home that's somewhere in between lemsips and wrapping up warm, and going into hospital. Then people would be less likely to admit themselves if things got a bit squally.

    When a friend of mine (the first one) had COVID in Summer, I did a little research on the vitamins/minerals best suited to COVID recovery, and found that these were Zinc, Vit C and Vit D. It wasn't hard to find a good quality supplement that included significant amounts of these, so I dropped them outside their house. As it happens, the friend felt better almost immediately after starting on them, and recovered very quickly.

    Not saying that the supplements were directly responsible for the speedy recovery, but even a placebo effect has a benefit. There are also relatively cheap devices for checking oxygen levels etc.

    If COVID sufferers were prescribed something similar, along with a broader at home treatment protocol, it could get many people through COVID who might otherwise be hospitalised. This may already be in operation, but I don't think it is. If not, one wonders why the NHS is complaining about being overwhelmed, but also trying to keep what it clearly regards as the arcane mysteries of COVID treatment confined within its own walls.
    The challenge you have is that we rightly operate on the basis that prescription drugs need to pass trials that prove their efficacy. Got a feeling that's not been done for Zinc, Vit C and Vit D with respect to covid.
    If there are no contraindications (ie the worst that's going to happen is that people will be less deficient in 3 vitamins and minerals that we know to be beneficial, and that we know most in the UK to be deficient in), I don't see the issue with working on a logical surmise.

    In fact, if those creating the packs had access to anonymised blood test data for COVID sufferers in the UK, it would be simple to formulate a supplement providing exactly the minerals that severe sufferers were most deficient in.

    Zinc, magnesium, potassium etc. are not just airy fairy things invented by Gwyneth Paltrow - they are serious things that all acknowledge are vital for human health and that we therefore have recommended levels of in the UK (and all other developed countries). If you're in the HDU, it's likely that you'll be hooked in to several bags of the things.
    Are ‘most’ in the U.K. genuinely deficient in vitamins? D is complicated by ethnicity, but even there it’s not clear that most are deficient?
    A recommendation by the Scxottish Gmt that people take some supplementary D in winter when daylight is very low in northern latitudes; there is also a possible interaction with genetics leading to MS. I take small levels myself.
    There has been very little research into how well we can make excess Vit D in the summer and store it in adipose tissue. Which for us Northern Europeans has to be the mechanism. Otherwise our ancestors would have all got rickets.

    I run, so I am out in the sun several times a week Apr-Sept, and rarely use sunblock. And try to eat good food sources such as oily fish a couple of times a week, plenty of free range eggs, etc.

    I once had some bloods taken at the end of January and my Vit D was on point, so sun & diet works for me, at least.
    Great news. Vitamin D enhanced mushrooms (they are flooded with fake sunlight) are also becoming widely available, though they only provide D2, which is a bit less effective than D3 in increasing levels in the blood. But still a delicious and probably very effective way of topping up.
    Yes, D3 better than D2; ideally D3 in combination with K2.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    edited January 2022
    Aslan said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.

    The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?

    And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
    So go on, then, do one yourself. Should take you about 3 hours
    On this logic, no one should be able to say that Vinnie Jones was a shit footballer because they couldn't play better. I thought Da Vinci code was a crap book, while acknowledging I probably couldn't do one better. But then I'm not an author.
    More usefully, on the same logic we wouldn’t have to put up with SLeon pontificating about politics, business, elections, management, or indeed managing or controlling anything whatsoever. ;)
  • CharlesCharles Posts: 35,758
    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Anecdata


    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
    Surprised you don’t mention the Van Dykes and the Landseer.

    The many faces of Charles I is incomparable
    It is an incredible little collection of paintings. Almost every one a masterpiece, or at least deeply interesting

    And all of it in that fabulous Robert Adam house, in that location, overlooking London, and a garden by Repton

    And completely free. Just breeze in. Marvellous!


    https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood/history-stories-kenwood/history/description/

    https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/kenwood/history-stories-kenwood/history/significance/
    Up there with the Jacquemart-Andre, the Frick and the Huntingdon IMV

    Yes, we've had this enjoyable discussion, I believe. The small but high quality collections are the best. No slogging for hours around enormous halls, including Assyrian statues and obscure pottery. Just a short burst of extreme quality, then a boozy lunch. Perfect

    Talking of which they have apparently rehung the Courtauld and it is said to very good, have you been?


    PS I would add this to our list of great small museums of the word. Magical. And still privately owned by the family that assembled the collection, you can see their vintage cars and impressive new motorbikes parked casually in the drive

    https://www.rome.net/palazzo-doria-pamphilj
    Not yet
  • Regarding the discussions about about what music and books are good/shit.

    Save your energy everyone, it’s all subjective.

    But I do have to weigh in on the Beatles. Picking up an old vinyl randomly one day when I was about eight, when I heard ‘Twist and Shout’, that Lennon rasp, the energy, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

    I’ve developed a wide and eclectic (or at least I like to tell myself) taste in music, countless bands and genres, but the start of it all is that version of Twist and Shout, recorded, I know now, at the end of a long days recording session when Lennon’s throat was already ripped to shreds. But what energy, what urgency, what a thrill to hear it, to feel that emotion, that connection. It was like a bomb going off for me. Much like Lennon describes hearing Elvis for the first time.

    The genius of the Beatles, and Dan Brown as Leon has so rightly pointed out, is making something so hard look easy.

    Watch the Get Back doc on Disney+, see how McCartney pulls the song Get Back seemingly from nowhere. It’s mind blowing. I’ve tried to write songs, it is bloody difficult.

    Incidentally I always thought Lennon was a genius and McCartney a bit syrupy but in recent years I have come to appreciate the gift McCartney has. I’ve been diving into his much maligned solo stuff and there’s some really good stuff there.

    And I can’t believe I’m saying this but listen again to that Frog Chorus song he did. Yeah it’s saccharine cheese squarely aimed at kids - which can’t be easy to do but he did it with aplomb, so kudos. But if you look beyond the ‘bom bom boms’, the melodies and harmonies are sublime. Honest!

    I think this whole comment is spot on.
  • Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    Not really right, because if you look at Amazon theres literally 10s of 000s of people self publishing stuff like crazy which is intended to hit exactly that jackpot, and I would bet that in a blind tasting you couldn't pick out the D Brown from the wannabes. It's not writnig the stuff, it's marketing it
    With all due respect, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, and I do

    When it comes to mega-bestsellers, there is one and only one guaranteed route to fortune for a really cracking book: Word of Mouth

    No amount of sales marketing adverts whatever can match Great Word of Mouth. People saying "Hey have you read this, or this, or this, I could not put it down!"

    Word of Mouth is the reason books as diverse as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harry Potter, the Kite Runner and the Hobbit became enormous global bestsellers. It wasn't the brilliant marketing exercise behind them. It was because people loved them, usually because they have great plots and vivid characters, and the first readers told their friends, who told their friends.... that is all you need, but it so very rare

    As I say, if you think it is that simple, sit down and knock one out. Self publish, then wait for the billions to shower down
    Is that how you sell your flint dildos?
    Has to be word of mouth - I’ve looked and looked for adverts for flint dildos and there’s nothing...
    I won't ask why you were looking...
    I found this. It appears they are nothing new. Wondering if Leon has tried camel shit as a material?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2908415/The-sex-toys-dating-28-000-years-Ancient-phalluses-stone-dried-camel-dung-started-trend-sex-aids.html
    Quite. One wonders just a tiny bit about the oldest cricket bat found associated with the oldest Englishman at Piltdown:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-20729787
    There always was an England?

    Though my guess is that it was the Carthaginians who introduced the concept, by batting the heads of the conquered around and about, just for the fun of it.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    Neil Henderson
    @hendopolis
    ·
    4m
    INDEPENDENT DIGITAL: Postcode lottery fuels child mental health crisis #TomorrowsPapersToday

    ==


    Lockdowns "throw a bomb" under child mental health system says leading expert.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,870
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1

    Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas

    We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?

    Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context

    We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
    There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    Regarding the discussions about about what music and books are good/shit.

    Save your energy everyone, it’s all subjective.

    But I do have to weigh in on the Beatles. Picking up an old vinyl randomly one day when I was about eight, when I heard ‘Twist and Shout’, that Lennon rasp, the energy, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

    I’ve developed a wide and eclectic (or at least I like to tell myself) taste in music, countless bands and genres, but the start of it all is that version of Twist and Shout, recorded, I know now, at the end of a long days recording session when Lennon’s throat was already ripped to shreds. But what energy, what urgency, what a thrill to hear it, to feel that emotion, that connection. It was like a bomb going off for me. Much like Lennon describes hearing Elvis for the first time.

    The genius of the Beatles, and Dan Brown as Leon has so rightly pointed out, is making something so hard look easy.

    Watch the Get Back doc on Disney+, see how McCartney pulls the song Get Back seemingly from nowhere. It’s mind blowing. I’ve tried to write songs, it is bloody difficult.

    Incidentally I always thought Lennon was a genius and McCartney a bit syrupy but in recent years I have come to appreciate the gift McCartney has. I’ve been diving into his much maligned solo stuff and there’s some really good stuff there.

    And I can’t believe I’m saying this but listen again to that Frog Chorus song he did. Yeah it’s saccharine cheese squarely aimed at kids - which can’t be easy to do but he did it with aplomb, so kudos. But if you look beyond the ‘bom bom boms’, the melodies and harmonies are sublime. Honest!

    One of my favourite analyses of talent - of any kind, but in this case sporting - is in Nick Hornby's superb football "memoir" Fever Pitch

    He recalls how as a lad he wanted to be a top pro football player, like so many young boys. But then he realised how hard it was going to be when he met a player with REAL talent, who actually got chosen for the county, and did some training with a lower league team

    But this "excellent" player in turn was never good enough for pro football, really. And there were players way better than him who managed to do a season or two in league 3 or whatever, and then dropped out

    And above them were the really really really good players who got actual proper full careers with teams in Division 2 or the like, but never made it to the top

    And above them were the players who got quite famous in the Premier League, tho never became internationals

    And above them were the major stars, known across England, even to non fans, maybe getting England caps

    And above them were the incredible Ronaldos and Peles and the like

    And Hornby slowly realised that he was just never remotely good enough to be the player he wanted to be, they were in a different universe of talent

    It's quite a moving piece of self-revelation
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    Not really right, because if you look at Amazon theres literally 10s of 000s of people self publishing stuff like crazy which is intended to hit exactly that jackpot, and I would bet that in a blind tasting you couldn't pick out the D Brown from the wannabes. It's not writnig the stuff, it's marketing it
    With all due respect, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, and I do

    When it comes to mega-bestsellers, there is one and only one guaranteed route to fortune for a really cracking book: Word of Mouth

    No amount of sales marketing adverts whatever can match Great Word of Mouth. People saying "Hey have you read this, or this, or this, I could not put it down!"

    Word of Mouth is the reason books as diverse as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harry Potter, the Kite Runner and the Hobbit became enormous global bestsellers. It wasn't the brilliant marketing exercise behind them. It was because people loved them, usually because they have great plots and vivid characters, and the first readers told their friends, who told their friends.... that is all you need, but it so very rare

    As I say, if you think it is that simple, sit down and knock one out. Self publish, then wait for the billions to shower down
    Is that how you sell your flint dildos?
    Has to be word of mouth - I’ve looked and looked for adverts for flint dildos and there’s nothing...
    I won't ask why you were looking...
    I found this. It appears they are nothing new. Wondering if Leon has tried camel shit as a material?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2908415/The-sex-toys-dating-28-000-years-Ancient-phalluses-stone-dried-camel-dung-started-trend-sex-aids.html
    Quite. One wonders just a tiny bit about the oldest cricket bat found associated with the oldest Englishman at Piltdown:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-20729787
    There always was an England?

    Though my guess is that it was the Carthaginians who introduced the concept, by batting the heads of the conquered around and about, just for the fun of it.
    It goes much further back than that. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the Gods give Enki a [thing made of wood] with which to hit, for fun, another [thing made of wood], which the current translation calls a croquet mallet and ball.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884
    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.

    The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.

    The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,870

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    Not really right, because if you look at Amazon theres literally 10s of 000s of people self publishing stuff like crazy which is intended to hit exactly that jackpot, and I would bet that in a blind tasting you couldn't pick out the D Brown from the wannabes. It's not writnig the stuff, it's marketing it
    With all due respect, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, and I do

    When it comes to mega-bestsellers, there is one and only one guaranteed route to fortune for a really cracking book: Word of Mouth

    No amount of sales marketing adverts whatever can match Great Word of Mouth. People saying "Hey have you read this, or this, or this, I could not put it down!"

    Word of Mouth is the reason books as diverse as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harry Potter, the Kite Runner and the Hobbit became enormous global bestsellers. It wasn't the brilliant marketing exercise behind them. It was because people loved them, usually because they have great plots and vivid characters, and the first readers told their friends, who told their friends.... that is all you need, but it so very rare

    As I say, if you think it is that simple, sit down and knock one out. Self publish, then wait for the billions to shower down
    Is that how you sell your flint dildos?
    Has to be word of mouth - I’ve looked and looked for adverts for flint dildos and there’s nothing...
    I won't ask why you were looking...
    I found this. It appears they are nothing new. Wondering if Leon has tried camel shit as a material?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2908415/The-sex-toys-dating-28-000-years-Ancient-phalluses-stone-dried-camel-dung-started-trend-sex-aids.html
    Quite. One wonders just a tiny bit about the oldest cricket bat found associated with the oldest Englishman at Piltdown:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-20729787
    There always was an England?

    Though my guess is that it was the Carthaginians who introduced the concept, by batting the heads of the conquered around and about, just for the fun of it.
    Bet they were glad that Australia hadn’t yet been discovered.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 5,997
    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    There you go again with your pesky facts!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    ydoethur said:

    kle4 said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    God always backs the winner. I'm sure we can appreciate a canny gambler who is green on any outcome.
    "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."
    Indeed yes. I seriously pissed off many Wokeists on Twitter who were calling for statues of Lee to be removed by saying that Washington was just as big a traitor and a much worse slaveholder.

    And a worse general, of course.

    The difference is, he eventually won. With a little help from the French.
    Not exactly contemporaries….
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1

    Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas

    We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?

    Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context
    Pretty much. It reads genuine to me. Indeed the wording is so similar to the ones I get that there must be a template that comes down from NHSE.

    OPEL 4 is what used to be called a "Black Alert."

    It is a much more innocuous euphemism.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
    Excess deaths is surely the only reasonably reliable basis for comparisons.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084
    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.
    An alternate view.
    https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/64-reasons-to-celebrate-paul-mccartney

    Or this, which I have linked before, but is well worth an hour of anyone’s time:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQS91wVdvYc
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1

    Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas

    We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?

    Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context

    We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
    There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
    Pray for a mild winter?

    Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    I originally said I certainly believe the Queen to be anointed by God to be our Monarch and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Until the Reformation the Monarch was only anointed for that role, they swore to protect the Church but the Head of the Church in England was still the Pope, not the Monarch
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
    Excess deaths is surely the only reasonably reliable basis for comparisons.
    Possibly, but even then the background may be distorted by perhaps bad flu years etc.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268
    edited January 2022

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1

    Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas

    We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?

    Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context

    We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
    There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
    It's not just the UK, of course


    C. Salina Harris
    @C_SalinaH
    ·
    37m
    Replying to
    @XianJaneway
    Maryland hospitals are on crisis management mode. There are no beds. No beds for COVID, or strokes, or MI’s. No. Beds.



    Mike Rouse
    @MikeRou67608823
    ·
    20h
    State Of Emergency Issued To Help Delaware Hospitals Fight COVID Surge https://youtu.be/fL4bbd36Pwc via
    @youtubered

    Almost every health system in every country with a full-on Omicron surge will be in this situation
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 3,870

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1

    Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas

    We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?

    Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context

    We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
    There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
    Pray for a mild winter?

    Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
    And if councils are short staffed, road and pavement gritting could be one of the services that is sacrificed to e.g. keep bins emptied.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited January 2022

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts.
    Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    Sunetra Gupta
    @SunetraGupta
    ·
    9h
    2. Misrepresenting the
    @gbdeclaration
    as a “let-it-rip” strategy and yet endorsing focused protection has lately become a common ploy among scientists and journalists but it is disappointing to see it trotted out by old friends and colleagues.

    @guardian


    ===

    As I posted last earlier. Woolhouse slams Great Barrington and then calls for exactly their policy of protecting the vulnerable. Surely he has been misquoted?
  • londoneyelondoneye Posts: 112
    Charles said:

    Just for information (Charles?).

    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.

    Sounds vile.

    So fight her. Combat her lies convince her acolytes that she’s a poisonous individual.

    Banning her from the mainstream just reinforces the belief that they are the righteous oppressed

    problem is fashions change...there was a time when anti semitism was quite acceptable in the uk in certain circles....many of these people also believe joe biden is a CCP asset should we ban such speech...
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    edited January 2022
    IanB2 said:

    Nigelb said:

    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.
    An alternate view.
    https://ianleslie.substack.com/p/64-reasons-to-celebrate-paul-mccartney

    Or this, which I have linked before, but is well worth an hour of anyone’s time:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQS91wVdvYc
    I’m not a great Beatles fan, either.
    But like @Leon *, I enjoy some of their stuff - and it’s absurd to deny their musical talent.

    (* whose opinion of Beethoven is simply wrong :smile: )
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts.
    Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
    By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, he will, because many people now accept it is too late to do anything, and many more have become fiercely resistant to lockdowns, esp schools. We are where we are
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.

    The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.

    The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
    It's fundamentally really cheap, easy and fast to collect with absolutely minimal admin overhead and as you say the under and over counting cancel each other out in the main. It is an excellent compromise.
  • Toms said:

    I did read The Da Vinci Code some time ago. Couldn't put it down, but felt a little silly as if taken in by a circus barker to buy some patent medicine or adopt Homeopathy. Sometimes I get the same queasy feeling as when singing "Happy Birthday".

    One can imagine a game to pass the time when traveling thinking of slogans that have stuck---say "Go to work on an egg"---and so forth.

    I've said this story before, but years ago I was staying in a B&B in North Yorkshire. One breakfast, the owner's teenage daughter was reading the Da Vinci Code. I'd never read it, so I asked her what it was like. She said she loved it, but it was the first book she had ever read. She then added she would read more.

    I've read it since, and it's poor literature. But if it helped one girl to start loving reading, then good on it.

    Perhaps HP and DVC are just gateway drugs to better literature. If so, then that's fine.
    I've read Middlemarch, and Madame Bovary, a few other dull 19th century novels, possibly as many as six pages of Ulysses, (and some good ones too, I guess), and there is zero chance of me re-reading any of the dull ones, despite them appearing on lists of Great Literature, while I regularly re-read the Harry Potter series, because it's a great story, and it tells the important stories about life, love, courage, etc, that people want to read. I also love that Harry grows up during the series, to the extent of including large periods in books 4-6 where I don't like him because he's an impossible teenager.
    I'm apparently related to George Eliot. I've never read Middlemarch.
    Time you did, my boy. Arguably the greatest novel in English, and certainly one of the top handful.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    He doesn’t need to do anything, just play for time and wait, so for once he might be the right man for the job?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,587

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    I’m happy with the various measures. I’m less happy with thick journos comparing how countries have ‘done’ by using such figures when each country collects data differently. At the least if they wish to draw a comparison they should explicitly state what is being measured and how for the countries compared.
    Excess deaths is surely the only reasonably reliable basis for comparisons.
    Possibly, but even then the background may be distorted by perhaps bad flu years etc.
    Which is why the comparison figures looked at in 2020 were based on a five year average. Not perfect, but better than most other metrics which could be manipulated.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.

    The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.

    The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
    Sure, but JL was suggesting that a post 28 days death SHOULD go in the figures because it was definitely Covid whereas a within 28 days case which definitely NOT Covid should NOT come out of the figures. The balance you describe is therefore lost if this is actually happening.

    To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
  • HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts.
    Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
    By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
    Good the Church of Scotland has Christ as its Head, anything else is nonsense
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    Regarding the discussions about about what music and books are good/shit.

    Save your energy everyone, it’s all subjective.

    But I do have to weigh in on the Beatles. Picking up an old vinyl randomly one day when I was about eight, when I heard ‘Twist and Shout’, that Lennon rasp, the energy, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

    I’ve developed a wide and eclectic (or at least I like to tell myself) taste in music, countless bands and genres, but the start of it all is that version of Twist and Shout, recorded, I know now, at the end of a long days recording session when Lennon’s throat was already ripped to shreds. But what energy, what urgency, what a thrill to hear it, to feel that emotion, that connection. It was like a bomb going off for me. Much like Lennon describes hearing Elvis for the first time.

    The genius of the Beatles, and Dan Brown as Leon has so rightly pointed out, is making something so hard look easy.

    Watch the Get Back doc on Disney+, see how McCartney pulls the song Get Back seemingly from nowhere. It’s mind blowing. I’ve tried to write songs, it is bloody difficult.

    Incidentally I always thought Lennon was a genius and McCartney a bit syrupy but in recent years I have come to appreciate the gift McCartney has. I’ve been diving into his much maligned solo stuff and there’s some really good stuff there.

    And I can’t believe I’m saying this but listen again to that Frog Chorus song he did. Yeah it’s saccharine cheese squarely aimed at kids - which can’t be easy to do but he did it with aplomb, so kudos. But if you look beyond the ‘bom bom boms’, the melodies and harmonies are sublime. Honest!

    In my opinion the song is the perfect art form. It combines words, which convey thoughts and feelings that the rational, verbal part if our brain can process, with music, whose deep appeal to us we don't even begin to understand. In a good song those two strands, words and music, work in harmony to transport us into the mind of the person or people who wrote it. Lennon and McCartney are among the greatest songwriters of all time, and I believe that their songs will be enjoyed for as long as our civilisation endures.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069
    Stocky said:

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.

    The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.

    The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
    Sure, but JL was suggesting that a post 28 days death SHOULD go in the figures because it was definitely Covid whereas a within 28 days case which definitely NOT Covid should NOT come out of the figures. The balance you describe is therefore lost if this is actually happening.

    To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
    Covid deaths as primary cause, or underlying cause on death certification are in the ONS figures. This is usually a couple of weeks behind, but only includes covid whether day 1 or 101 post test, and only covid.

    Excess deaths are a mathematical construct against baseline.

    The 28 day figure is an approximation.

    All three figures are pretty congruous though. The excess deaths are a little higher than the other two.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited January 2022

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts.
    Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
    By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
    Good the Church of Scotland has Christ as its Head, anything else is nonsense
    No it isn't, you can still be Christ's representative on earth as the Pope is for Roman Catholics and the Monarch is for members of the Church of England. Christ still remains the ultimate head however
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    edited January 2022
    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    Foxy said:

    Stocky said:

    Stocky said:

    MaxPB said:

    Eabhal said:

    MaxPB said:

    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.
    Like many I've been uneasy about the died from vs dies with aspect of the figures but have broadly accepting them because of what you say - that many true Covid deaths are not captured by the within 28 days figures (as death has occurred after 28 days). I figure one inaccuracy may be balanced by the other.

    So I'm not at all happy at your suggestion that someone dying of Covid o/s 28 days after ventilation goes down as a Covid death. I do hope this is not happening. I understood that outside 28 means what it says - otherwise what is the point of the 28 days?
    The 28 days cutoff was chosen because the under counts approximately counteract the over counts.

    The reason for having such a figure is that over wise you would need to wait a long time for all the inquests, autopsies etc.

    The 28 day number is a an approximation - a fairly good one. The more you delve into such medical statistics, the more you realise that 100% perfect truth is not obtainable. There are different measures and each has it's accuracy issues.
    Sure, but JL was suggesting that a post 28 days death SHOULD go in the figures because it was definitely Covid whereas a within 28 days case which definitely NOT Covid should NOT come out of the figures. The balance you describe is therefore lost if this is actually happening.

    To clarify, I want assurance that a Covid death after 28 days from the original positive test result is not currently a Covid death in the Uk figures. Otherwise I feel a letter to my MP coming on.
    Covid deaths as primary cause, or underlying cause on death certification are in the ONS figures. This is usually a couple of weeks behind, but only includes covid whether day 1 or 101 post test, and only covid.

    Excess deaths are a mathematical construct against baseline.

    The 28 day figure is an approximation.

    All three figures are pretty congruous though. The excess deaths are a little higher than the other two.
    I'm confused. So the ONS figures, rather than the 4pm daily figure we wait for, should be the ones to focus on?

    Which are the Worldometer figures based on?
  • HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    Nigelb said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    HYUFD said:

    kle4 said:

    Carnyx said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Charles said:

    Charles said:

    Alistair said:

    Charles said:

    Tres said:

    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.”"


    https://unherd.com/2021/05/how-facebook-censored-the-lab-leak-theory/
    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.
    Excellent point. We have fervent divine rightists actually attacking the Duke fo York. I mean, he's 9th in line to the throne. If you can remove the 9th at a whim or by decision of Pmt, you can remove the 8th, and so on to HMtQ.

    As indeed happened in the 1640s.

    (I forget what that mathematical method is called. But it is so useful.)
    Historically, most monarchs were killed, imprisoned, tortured etc by devout monarchists.

    People who stated that God had chosen *them* to be The One True Monarch.
    True indeed.

    Though I do think it a bit silly and disingenuous when people pretend monarchists cannot criticise members of a royal family because the point of monarchy is you get what you get. That's never been how monarchy worked in practice, even when people did believe (or claimed to believe) in divine right, anymore than people who nominally believed the pope was God's representative on earth could not oppose them on many temporal and spiritual matters. Our monarchy might well keep religious titles, but no one of any sense believes in divine right - parliament and outside forces essentially deposed one monarch, invited in another, set rules for it which excluded those who would otherwise have been in the succesion - and one can very easily believe in the system, without supporting everyone involved.

    So the 'the point in monarchy is you don't have a say' thing is just being absurd and silly - if our monarchy steps out of line of what is expected of it it would be changed or abolished pronto, and that doesn't even touch upon the issue of embarrassing members of a royal line, who have always been able to be dealt with one way or another. In what monarchy on earth was every member of a line sacrosanct?
    I certainly believe the Queen is anointed by God as our monarch and to be Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Even if I also agree she is a constitutional not an absolute monarch
    The whole idea of who is the anointed falls apart for me when throughout history we’ve had monarchs usurped, replaced, murdered, chosen by committee etc. What is the chain of succession that gets Henry Bolingbrook to the throne, or Henry Tudor, or King Oliver?
    Arguably until the Reformation English Kings were acknowledged by God but not anointed by God as the head of the English Church was the Pope, not the Monarch
    That aspect of the coronation rite didn't change at the Reformation. Kings of England were always anointed.
    The anointment was more a blessing, the head of the Church until the Reformation and God's ultimate representative on English soil was still the Pope not the Monarch
    Er no. The Queen was consecrated as Monarch. As were her ancestors going back before the Conquest. The ceremony recalls the anointment of Solomon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with being appointed Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
    You cannot challenge articles of faith with mere logic and facts.
    Particularly when it’s HYUFD.
    By definition the anointment of the Monarch of England also makes them Supreme Governor of the Church of England now. Before the Reformation that was not the case as the Supreme Governor of the Church in England was effectively the Pope (the Head of the Church being Jesus Christ).
    Good the Church of Scotland has Christ as its Head, anything else is nonsense
    No it isn't, you can still be Christ's representative on earth as the Pope is for Roman Catholics and the Monarch is for members of the Church of England. Christ still remains the ultimate head however
    Again you mislead

    I specifically said the Church of Scotland, not the Catholic Church in Scotland
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    Whether he was right or wrong, or somewhere in the middle, Fraser Nelson should be mentioned in dispatches too. Provided the impetus for cabinet to start asking questions that they should have been asking for months.
    I wouldn’t want to be working at a hospital right now. I hope they get through ok. And I hope that soon the pressure really does ease. But for the rest of us we should be fine.
  • IshmaelZ said:

    Carnyx said:

    ydoethur said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    Not really right, because if you look at Amazon theres literally 10s of 000s of people self publishing stuff like crazy which is intended to hit exactly that jackpot, and I would bet that in a blind tasting you couldn't pick out the D Brown from the wannabes. It's not writnig the stuff, it's marketing it
    With all due respect, you don't know what the fuck you are talking about, and I do

    When it comes to mega-bestsellers, there is one and only one guaranteed route to fortune for a really cracking book: Word of Mouth

    No amount of sales marketing adverts whatever can match Great Word of Mouth. People saying "Hey have you read this, or this, or this, I could not put it down!"

    Word of Mouth is the reason books as diverse as Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harry Potter, the Kite Runner and the Hobbit became enormous global bestsellers. It wasn't the brilliant marketing exercise behind them. It was because people loved them, usually because they have great plots and vivid characters, and the first readers told their friends, who told their friends.... that is all you need, but it so very rare

    As I say, if you think it is that simple, sit down and knock one out. Self publish, then wait for the billions to shower down
    Is that how you sell your flint dildos?
    Has to be word of mouth - I’ve looked and looked for adverts for flint dildos and there’s nothing...
    I won't ask why you were looking...
    I found this. It appears they are nothing new. Wondering if Leon has tried camel shit as a material?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2908415/The-sex-toys-dating-28-000-years-Ancient-phalluses-stone-dried-camel-dung-started-trend-sex-aids.html
    Quite. One wonders just a tiny bit about the oldest cricket bat found associated with the oldest Englishman at Piltdown:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-20729787
    There always was an England?

    Though my guess is that it was the Carthaginians who introduced the concept, by batting the heads of the conquered around and about, just for the fun of it.
    It goes much further back than that. In the Epic of Gilgamesh the Gods give Enki a [thing made of wood] with which to hit, for fun, another [thing made of wood], which the current translation calls a croquet mallet and ball.
    I meant they introduced the "sport" to your shores. Having cribbed it from the Babylonians, who got it from Who Knows?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.

    The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?

    And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
    Yes, that is key. The action has to keep rapidly moving forward so that no one really has time to consider the cardboard characterisation or ludicrous plot holes. The same is true of the early Harry Potter books, and many action movies.

    It is a simple formula, but a rare skill to actually do it. Like the difficulty coming up with advertising tag lines. Lots think they can do it, but few actually can.
    Yes, quite

    Many look at this and think: oh that's easy. When they try, it is bloody hard. Formidably hard. And that goes for many successful authors of literary fiction who try to write tightly plotted (and better rewarded) thrillers. They can't do it.

    Martin Amis is a genius writer. Yet he cannot plot at all, and when he tries it is bit embarrassing. That's probably why he is outsold by Dan Brown by orders of magnitude, despite Amis being a in a clearly different and superior league when it comes to beautiful prose, witty insights, and lush description

    Anyway this will all quite soon be moot. In a decade or less, computers will be able to write lurid Dan Brown thrillers or pensive Martin Amis novels in about 2 minutes, and we won't be able to tell the difference, except the computer will keep churning them out for free so the human writers will be finished

    I am perfectly serious. This is coming, sooner than anyone expects. I am quite glad it is happening later in my dildo-knapping career
    Are we talking about different Martin Amises? Dead Babies (Quentin is Johnny? Quentin is Johnny) and Success are brilliantly plotted. It all gets flabby after that but they are Hitchcock level plotting
    God no, they're not good plots. lol

    You're drunk, aren't you? You always trot out this weird Beatles-phobia, with some vehemence, when you've had a few

    I shall join you, with my bottle of Diez Cabellero Rioja, Reserva 2011

    Absolutely delicious, and a total bargain at this price. Just £13.95. BUY

    https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/diez-caballero-reserva-tempranillo/w/1316128?year=2011

    I've just impulse bought two bottles. It's probably the most expensive bottle of wine I've ever bought so it better be good.
    Hah. The persuasive power of my prose! I should have been a writer. Ah well

    It's not the greatest wine in the world (it is only £13.95), but it is lovely. Let it breathe for an hour

    To my mind the best wine you can easily buy in a British supermarket at the moment (at least under £20) is this. A Phenomenal Amarone:

    https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/tesco-amarone-della-valpolicella/w/7037572

    Rich, serious, chocolatey, coffee-ish, ooooooh
    Let it breathe for an hour and @gallowgate rescinds his Geordie citizenship.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    edited January 2022

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).

    The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...

    ...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.

    Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.

    I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
  • IanB2IanB2 Posts: 47,084

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).

    The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...

    ...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.

    Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.

    I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
    Especially as the decision arose not from analysis and good judgement but from fear and political weakness.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.

    The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?

    And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
    Yes, that is key. The action has to keep rapidly moving forward so that no one really has time to consider the cardboard characterisation or ludicrous plot holes. The same is true of the early Harry Potter books, and many action movies.

    It is a simple formula, but a rare skill to actually do it. Like the difficulty coming up with advertising tag lines. Lots think they can do it, but few actually can.
    Yes, quite

    Many look at this and think: oh that's easy. When they try, it is bloody hard. Formidably hard. And that goes for many successful authors of literary fiction who try to write tightly plotted (and better rewarded) thrillers. They can't do it.

    Martin Amis is a genius writer. Yet he cannot plot at all, and when he tries it is bit embarrassing. That's probably why he is outsold by Dan Brown by orders of magnitude, despite Amis being a in a clearly different and superior league when it comes to beautiful prose, witty insights, and lush description

    Anyway this will all quite soon be moot. In a decade or less, computers will be able to write lurid Dan Brown thrillers or pensive Martin Amis novels in about 2 minutes, and we won't be able to tell the difference, except the computer will keep churning them out for free so the human writers will be finished

    I am perfectly serious. This is coming, sooner than anyone expects. I am quite glad it is happening later in my dildo-knapping career
    Are we talking about different Martin Amises? Dead Babies (Quentin is Johnny? Quentin is Johnny) and Success are brilliantly plotted. It all gets flabby after that but they are Hitchcock level plotting
    God no, they're not good plots. lol

    You're drunk, aren't you? You always trot out this weird Beatles-phobia, with some vehemence, when you've had a few

    I shall join you, with my bottle of Diez Cabellero Rioja, Reserva 2011

    Absolutely delicious, and a total bargain at this price. Just £13.95. BUY

    https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/diez-caballero-reserva-tempranillo/w/1316128?year=2011

    I've just impulse bought two bottles. It's probably the most expensive bottle of wine I've ever bought so it better be good.
    Hah. The persuasive power of my prose! I should have been a writer. Ah well

    It's not the greatest wine in the world (it is only £13.95), but it is lovely. Let it breathe for an hour

    To my mind the best wine you can easily buy in a British supermarket at the moment (at least under £20) is this. A Phenomenal Amarone:

    https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/tesco-amarone-della-valpolicella/w/7037572

    Rich, serious, chocolatey, coffee-ish, ooooooh
    Let it breathe for an hour and @gallowgate rescinds his Geordie citizenship.
    He's got to work out how to unscrew the, er, cork first.
  • Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).

    The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...

    ...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.

    Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.

    I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
    It will become apparent in the next few weeks whether Scotland and Wales more severe restrictions actually had any material effect or not, and comparison with England may become inevitable either way
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).

    The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...

    ...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.

    Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.

    I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
    You may be right about what the general public remember. I'm talking about the history writers and the politcos. It seems pretty clear that the technocracy from DoH and SAGE and so on went into that cabinet meeting expecting a rubber stamp on lockdown.

    They didn't come out of the meeting with it.

    Seems pretty important to me for us watchers of politics.
  • Does the Archbishop of Canterbury, and do fellow bishops of the CoE get to address HM as "Guv"?
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840
    edited January 2022
    Charles said:

    dixiedean said:

    Charles said:

    Just for information (Charles?).

    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.

    Those who would give up liberty for a measure of security deserve neither
    This quote is always trotted out.
    It is arrant nonsense.
    Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet… Ben Franklin… anonymous bloke on the internet….

    Yep. Going with Ben Franklin
    You're free do what you like.
    Me. Well I'll continue to trade a little liberty for security every time I get in a car or on a plane. Or in a myriad other ways. Like locking my doors when I leave the house and obeying crossing signs.
    I won't be wandering down Downing Street or across military bases either.
  • BenpointerBenpointer Posts: 31,281
    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    Whether he was right or wrong, or somewhere in the middle, Fraser Nelson should be mentioned in dispatches too. Provided the impetus for cabinet to start asking questions that they should have been asking for months.
    I wouldn’t want to be working at a hospital right now. I hope they get through ok. And I hope that soon the pressure really does ease. But for the rest of us we should be fine.
    The stats on vaxxed versus unvaxxed in ICUs and on ventilators are insane

    This US hospital network has 107 people in ICU.

    93% are unvaxxed


    https://twitter.com/SpectrumHealth/status/1475923265801621518

    ICUs would be virtually empty of Covid patients if everyone was vaxxed: that's the logical inference. Thus freeing up so many staff and so much room to do so much more. The unvaxxed are the crucial pressure on the health system. And if the health systems of the West crumble because of their limitless stupidity..
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,043
    ...


  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,069

    dixiedean said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    ydoethur said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Leon said:

    dixiedean said:

    IanB2 said:

    Peter Oborne:

    “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.
    Farooq said:

    IshmaelZ said:

    Farooq said:

    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.

    And it got worse after that...
    I hear this a lot. "The plotting was ludicrous blah blah blah"

    Tell you what, if the plotting was ludicrous why don't you sit down for a couple of days and knock out something better. If the Da Vinci Code is so shit it shouldn't take you more than a weekend, right?

    Then you can sit back and watch as the millions roll in. Doddle.

    I'm amazed that all the people who are so utterly convinced the Da Vinci Code is shit don't do this. It is an obvious route to great fortune. Just do it better than Dan Brown!
    But you're missing the point. The issue isn't whether it's any good. It clearly isn't. I've given you one example there, but there could be many others.

    The question is, why it was so popular despite being ridiculous?

    And actually, I'd disagree with your first point. It's the writing that made it wahat it was. The key was it went so fast from point to point that it's actually very hard to catch your breath long enough to spot the errors. It's only when you pause for a second and think 'Hang on...' that you realise it's all ludicrous shit.
    Yes, that is key. The action has to keep rapidly moving forward so that no one really has time to consider the cardboard characterisation or ludicrous plot holes. The same is true of the early Harry Potter books, and many action movies.

    It is a simple formula, but a rare skill to actually do it. Like the difficulty coming up with advertising tag lines. Lots think they can do it, but few actually can.
    Yes, quite

    Many look at this and think: oh that's easy. When they try, it is bloody hard. Formidably hard. And that goes for many successful authors of literary fiction who try to write tightly plotted (and better rewarded) thrillers. They can't do it.

    Martin Amis is a genius writer. Yet he cannot plot at all, and when he tries it is bit embarrassing. That's probably why he is outsold by Dan Brown by orders of magnitude, despite Amis being a in a clearly different and superior league when it comes to beautiful prose, witty insights, and lush description

    Anyway this will all quite soon be moot. In a decade or less, computers will be able to write lurid Dan Brown thrillers or pensive Martin Amis novels in about 2 minutes, and we won't be able to tell the difference, except the computer will keep churning them out for free so the human writers will be finished

    I am perfectly serious. This is coming, sooner than anyone expects. I am quite glad it is happening later in my dildo-knapping career
    Are we talking about different Martin Amises? Dead Babies (Quentin is Johnny? Quentin is Johnny) and Success are brilliantly plotted. It all gets flabby after that but they are Hitchcock level plotting
    God no, they're not good plots. lol

    You're drunk, aren't you? You always trot out this weird Beatles-phobia, with some vehemence, when you've had a few

    I shall join you, with my bottle of Diez Cabellero Rioja, Reserva 2011

    Absolutely delicious, and a total bargain at this price. Just £13.95. BUY

    https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/diez-caballero-reserva-tempranillo/w/1316128?year=2011

    I've just impulse bought two bottles. It's probably the most expensive bottle of wine I've ever bought so it better be good.
    Hah. The persuasive power of my prose! I should have been a writer. Ah well

    It's not the greatest wine in the world (it is only £13.95), but it is lovely. Let it breathe for an hour

    To my mind the best wine you can easily buy in a British supermarket at the moment (at least under £20) is this. A Phenomenal Amarone:

    https://www.vivino.com/GB/en/tesco-amarone-della-valpolicella/w/7037572

    Rich, serious, chocolatey, coffee-ish, ooooooh
    Let it breathe for an hour and @gallowgate rescinds his Geordie citizenship.
    He's got to work out how to unscrew the, er, cork first.
    Perhaps his whippet could just bite it off and spit it into his flat cap...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,268

    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
    Yes, it's a nice simple vivid and persuasive thread. Those X rays - none of that horrible snowy crap in the lungs

    Get vaccinated is the overwhelming message from every doctor on Twitter right now
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653

    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
    Is he bemoaning that she is ill or merely that she has tested positive even though not ill?
  • EabhalEabhal Posts: 5,786
    Stocky said:

    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
    Is he bemoaning that she is ill or merely that she has tested positive even though not ill?
    Or that after three vaccinations younger people are still seeing their lives disrupted?
  • .

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    And about time too!
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,840

    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
    That has been the prevailing reaction I've heard too.
    The danger is, of course that it will discourage more take up.
    The average punter is interested in this virus, but spectacularly ill-informed.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    edited January 2022

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    BREAKING: A very serious situation at hospitals across Lincolnshire tonight as @ULHT_News declares a 'critical incident' over "extreme and unprecedented" staff shortages. It says it is "unable to maintain safe staffing levels" leading to "compromised care" across its sites: https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1477711272384909314/photo/1

    Distressing to hear, and good luck to the staff and patients, but isn't this basically the situation in every hospital in the country? Sadiq Khan declared a "critical emergency" (or similar) in London over Christmas

    We know the NHS is under the cosh, there's not much we can do now. Apart from try not to slip over and break an ankle and get sent to A&E?

    Restrictions won't do anything. It is too late, I doubt if they would ever work against Omicron anyway, in a UK democratic context

    We are a bit like the British people in the Battle of Britain, staring up at the sky, willing on the RAF, but not able to do much more
    There’s not much else we can do now. It will take a few years to build the hospitals and train the doctors and nurses that we should have had even before Covid.
    Pray for a mild winter?

    Ice and snow leads to accidents and more A&E visits.
    Some of which will be classed as covid hospitalisations - as (bizarrely) we have learned tonight.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    The Chinese intelligence services are tracking everyone who makes critical remarks of the Communist Party on Twitter

    https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1477052450314108930?s=20
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    edited January 2022

    Leon said:

    Foxy said:

    This is easily one of the most critical weeks of Johnson's premiership. Will he hold the line on lockdown and schools shut down?

    Yes, I think he will. The political question is will he be blamed for the consequences?
    If there are bad consequences, I don't think he will. The public has had enough. We are vaxxed to our gills. What more can be done other than another massively enormously damaging lockdown for weeks.
    ... which will, more to the point, achieve nothing, medically, as even the notorious "models" confessed around Xmas

    Lockdown had to happen back then, or it was not worth doing. We chose not to do it

    As, incidentally, have most nations across Europe, despite being in a similar situation to us. The Dutch are on lockdown, the Austrians were, but most have decided to just battle on. Lockdowns are SO last year
    The Cabinet saved us from a winter 2021/2 lockdown.

    Enough ministers asked searching questions it seems of the modellers and the answers were insufficient.

    When the history books are written this will be seen as a profound moment in the whole saga. When the democratic representatives finally started asking questions.
    I really doubt if the meeting before Christmas will be seen as a profound moment (at least not the way you imply).

    The country is doing lockdown itself anyway now, and it was probably too late to enforce a lockdown the week before Christmas - many would have ignored it. So on that basis it was a non-decision but...

    ...If we have a few weeks of hospital horror stories or major disruption now, that is what people will remember and, fairly or not, the government will get the blame.

    Conversely, if as I hope, things are not too bad and omicron swiftly dies away, no one will remember a cabinet meeting from before Christmas anyway.

    I think it's a lose-draw situation for the government, not a win-win.
    “The country is doing its own lockdown now”

    It really isn’t. Unless the pubs and shops I’ve visited and the parties I’ve hosted and attended are in a different country to you.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,461
    HYUFD said:

    The Chinese intelligence services are tracking everyone who makes critical remarks of the Communist Party on Twitter

    https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1477052450314108930?s=20

    I've made a note of your comment and shall pass it on to the appropriate authorities.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618

    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
    I heard similar in the barbers the other day - yet the chap next to me said it was just a “very mild cold”. Are people still not getting the message that vaccines main benefit is to stop people getting ill, not to prevent infection?

    The problem, I guess, comes from the damned seven day isolation penalty. If that could be reduced to say three days test and release, people would be more likely to embrace the benefit.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,618
    The Times saying the pre-departure test to return to England likely to be dropped. Other than that, looks like we’ll have Plan B until the end of the month at least.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    HYUFD said:

    The Chinese intelligence services are tracking everyone who makes critical remarks of the Communist Party on Twitter

    https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1477052450314108930?s=20

    Is this the big political news of the evening for the average Chinese person outside Beijing?
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,397
    ydoethur - Probably both, but i meant a black guy who was single. (In many small Western towns in the United States, match making is one of the favorite past times, especially among women.)

    (My apologies for the slow reply. In this area, we are expected to watch the Seahawks games, as I was doing. They won, easily, by the way.)
  • Jim_MillerJim_Miller Posts: 2,397
    Cookie - That Tot Lot is the only one I know of, though there are small towns that have similar parks, though usually without the fence. (Fences are generally less needed in those towns.)

    Sixty years ago, when my mother moved to Kirkland, almost all new homes, however inexpensive, had backyards for kids to play in. (That would still be true for much of the United States.)

    In New York City (and possibly other places) there are a few private -- and expensive -- similar parks.

    On the other hand, Kirkland has three large beach front parks on Lake Washington, which draw many small kids, with their mothers and sometimes grandmothers. (Favorite activity: feeding the ducks.) And for older children, there is a large baseball field, in the middle of the downtown.
  • londoneyelondoneye Posts: 112

    Leon said:

    Apols if this has already been posted - a very readable study into vaccine effectiveness for Omicron.

    https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1044481/Technical-Briefing-31-Dec-2021-Omicron_severity_update.pdf

    "After 3 doses of vaccine, the risk of hospitalisation for a symptomatic case identified with Omicron through community testing was estimated to be reduced by 68% (42 to 82%) when compared to similar individuals with Omicron who were not vaccinated (after adjusting for age, gender, previous positive test, region, ethnicity, clinically extremely vulnerable status, risk group status and period). Combined with the protection against becoming a symptomatic case, this gives a vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation of 88% (78 to 93%) for Omicron after 3 doses of vaccine."

    Encouraging.

    This is also encouraging. A Canadian doctor on the front line, whole thread worth a read


    "The consistent comment was that they were flooded with patients with upper respiratory tract complaints, but they were far less sick than in the previous waves. Occasionally hidden among these dozens of people was a really sick patient"


    https://twitter.com/DrJacobsRad/status/1475094770854866946?s=20


    If you're vaxxed, this disease is significantly less threatening than the Flu. If you're unvaxxed, you're taking up a bloody hospital bed and crushing the health system, you miserable selfish worm (I paraphrase)

    Get the Jab

    My brother was bemoaning the fact that his (triple-jabbed) daughter tested positive this morning. "What was the point of the vaccinations then?"

    I need to share that data with him 1st thing tomorrow - hoping it will reassure him.
    I heard similar in the barbers the other day - yet the chap next to me said it was just a “very mild cold”. Are people still not getting the message that vaccines main benefit is to stop people getting ill, not to prevent infection?

    The problem, I guess, comes from the damned seven day isolation penalty. If that could be reduced to say three days test and release, people would be more likely to embrace the benefit.
    read this. Omicron case rates are lowest in the unvaccinated by far

    https://twitter.com/holmenkollin/status/1477797112553390082?s=20
  • londoneyelondoneye Posts: 112
    and i think leon should mind his language given a huge proportion of the unvaxxed are from ethnic minorities. I know hes not racist but its not a good look
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