You would think if you were going to pull this move, you would at very least lock yourself away for the period to make sure nobody could doubt your claim.
Only if you have an obsessives view of responsibility.
It's not illegal to be out and about if a relative has Covid and if you don't care about Covid why shouldn't you go out if you want to do so?
Not everyone wants to spend their life living under a rock afraid of every shadow.
I almost never use Twitter but have been for months getting push notifications of Tweets for people I don't follow who clearly have an antivaxx agenda. I don't know why and it's really irritating and I wonder how many other people are getting this bullshit spread to them by Twitter?
This week I've had multiple Tweet push notifications all along the line of "my husband/wife/mother died from an aneurysm/blood clot/heart inflammation days after their booster jab". Clearly bullshit and again not from anyone I follow.
What the hell is Twitter playing at pushing this misinformation and junk to people?
I imagine they’ve tracked that you are anti-restrictions and have correlated that to being anti-vaxx as well
Unless they're somehow scraping posts here and associating them I don't know how they would. I don't discuss politics on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media, only here.
Cookie cross tracking. If you've read articles that are associated to "let's get on with life" in any kind of volume there's about 8 or 9 trackers that will know and sell your profile.
Something has definitely changed with twitter. My timeline is radically different, despite spending the past 2 months looking at bascially nothing political and certainly not lefty loudmouths. Its been literally 90% machine learning papers.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Just read the first paragraph as I don't have access to The Times.
Is anybody still attempting to do track and trace? I thought we gave that up months ago? if not I have not heard of anybody being tracked or traced in agais, they cant be doing a good jab.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
I see we passed 150,000 deaths (within 28 days of a positive Covid test) today. Interesting to look at how this breaks down compared to the number of positive cases.
By the end of March 2021 - so the end of that winter's waves - we'd had just over 127,000 deaths. So we've had an additional 23,000 deaths since then. Before that we'd had about about 41 and a half thousand deaths in the first wave and summer of 2020 (up to the end of August), so the long winter of 2020/21 saw ~85,500 Covid deaths.
Looking at cases, we identified almost exactly 4 million cases over the long winter of 2020/21. That gives us an observed CFR of a bit more than 2.1%.
Since the end of March 2021, we have identified another 10 million cases, so the observed CFR since then has been 0.23%
We've had so many cases since Omicron became dominant that it looks as though the observed CFR is lower now than when Delta was dominant.
Has anyone recently tried to calculate the "pure" and "effective" R numbers for Omicron?
It must be off the dial. One of the most infectious diseases we have ever encountered. Imagine if Omicron had evolved to be more lethal as WELL as more transmissible and vax-evasive. I understand this is far from impossible
We would be staring, this winter, at a true apocalypse. Civilisational collapse
The basic reproduction rate is high but not the highest known, but that combined with the short serial interval (the time between cases in a chain of transmission) may make it effectively the fastest growing virus seen in modern history. It's the combination of how many new cases arise at each step and how soon a new step begins that makes it so problematic. In the Omicron variant we have a virus that is as transmissible as something like mumps or rubella that reproduces as fast as influenza.
For this layman, could you elaborate what you mean by "short serial interval"- what does that mean and how does it work in the real world?
I would be genuinely grateful. It sounds important!
You know how R refers to how many people each infectee goes on to infect?
Like an R of 3 means Patient Zero infects three, who go on to infect three each (so a total of 9 at second remove) and then 27, and so on, in a nasty live demonstration of exponential growth.
The serial interval is how long each step takes. If something has an R of 5 but a serial interval of a year, then by the time it infects over a thousand people at a time, it’s been more than four years since the outbreak starts, so not really that scary to get a hold of. It’d take 8-9 years to get a million infectees.
If it has an R of just 2 but a serial interval of 1 day, it gets past a thousand in 10 days flat and a million in 20 days, so rather more frightening, despite the considerably lower R.
Another thought, there should be a new "R number" which combines these two factors? Perhaps there is?
Because as you say a disease with R20 sounds horribly scary but if its serial interval is ten years then it isn't
Whereas a disease with R1.5 looks a bit feeble, but it is has a serial interval of 3 hours, then fuck
Is there an overarching number which combines these variables? That number would give us a better measure of the true threat of any variant
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
If only Boris Johnson had made that nuanced argument back in 2016 when he said Brexit meant getting rid of the 5% VAT rate.
You would think if you were going to pull this move, you would at very least lock yourself away for the period to make sure nobody could doubt your claim.
Not saying you are wrong, I have not looked at it.
I just don't see why anybody cares, to me this seems like the most boring story in the would, at the moment.
We Have a Pandemic, that is ether about to explode and overrun healthcare or is finally coming to an end. In Kazakhstan we have an attempted revelation, and a Russian army in a new nation to put it down. and plenty of other stuff.
I get it that most people must be interested in this tennis chap, they must if its getting this much attention, so I must be the exception. but can somebody explain to me why is it interesting, why is it impotent, why does anybody care, please help me understand.
Like every other celebrity story ever, there are a lot of people who are interested in these personalities and it's also a distraction from worse problems.
You can make an argument that anything to do with sports and anything to do with culture is a frivolity and not worthy of any attention when compared to plague, massacres, revolutions, poverty, savage crime and brutal oppression. But does the public want a constant barrage of plague, massacres, revolutions, poverty, savage crime and brutal oppression? Only, one would imagine, the moaning minnies who write letters in green ink to the BBC whenever the news gets delayed by fifteen minutes to accommodate extra time in a football match (and are too stuck up to acknowledge that the presence of a constant 24 hour rolling news channel means that they can get their misery fix all day, regardless.)
Some people are interested in Novak because they follow tennis and he's the best player in the world; others are interested because they have fixed opinions one way or another on the vaccines, and which motivates them to take an interest in his story and either laugh at or bemoan his predicament. And whatever happens it's most unlikely to involve him or anyone else being brutally slaughtered. That's all, really.
Anyone who thinks the Dems attempted a coup to overturn the 2016 election result needs the mendacious or moron test applied to anything they say.
And moron can be safely ruled out. There are no morons on a site where more people than not understand how spacetime struts its stuff!
Well, Kinabalu, you were pontificating this week about how we could not say the Coulston defendants had committed criminal damage because they had been acquitted of the charges.
Since the FBI has not charged anyone with sedition or insurrection, then surely the Jan 6 rioters cannot be accused of sedition and insurrection either if you would apply your own standards to another case? Or that doesn’t work if it doesn’t fit with your views……
I was - can we go with 'pointing out' rather than 'pontificating'? - pointing out that saying one accepts the verdict AND the act was criminal means one doesn't really accept the verdict.
The mental gymnastics needed to map this onto the Jan 6th Capitol proceedings in any meaningful way are not for me on a Saturday night.
What you said was they couldn’t be said to have committed criminal damage because they had been cleared. So all that doing is applying your logic to this.
Much as you are trying to wriggle out of it, your basic problem is that, if we accept your original argument (as I did), then you can’t call the Jan 6 rioters insurrectionists. You can believe they are but you can’t state it as a fact.
Not that hard.
Ed, the topic merits better than this.
You - for reasons you'll know and I can't - have got yourself into such a lather about 'wokeness' and the Dems and the 'libs', that whole side of life, that you are prepared to defend and go along with what no decent person should defend or go along with.
This, my friend, is the truth. You'd be better off speaking it plainly rather than attempting all this softhead sophistry.
Oh Kinabalu, please don’t start with your “I’m a rational, neutral chap who listens to the evidence” stuff. It comes off as slightly patronising and the truth is you are a partisan and a biased one at that, as I am, when it comes to certain issues.
In any event, the truth is you post far more stuff about social issues and your views than I do, which is why I only have 4000 posts and you over 26000. I’ve only been on here as much as I have these past few days because I have COVID and isolating.
I'm not being patronizing, quite the opposite, I'm opining to you clearly and without artifice. You are so consumed with anti-woke culture war stuff that you've signed up to Donald Trump. That's my read in a nutshell and I'll let you know if it changes.
Well, if you think I have signed up to 100% Donald Trump, you haven't read my posts in the past or, more likely, viewed them through a certain prism. I could go on and on but my simple premise has always been this: in a 2 horse race, you choose whom you think is the better candidate and I thought Trump. Does not mean they are perfect which DJT isn't.
I think though it may also reflect differences when it comes to outlook. I'm a Catholic so believe that what you should focus on people's actions and that is how you judge them, and that everyone is a sinner so you should be careful of judgements and seeing things in black and white terms. I suspect your mindset is more Calvinist which, of course, believes that being a Calvinist automatically makes you naturally good, regardless of what you do, and - conversely - that, if you are not a Calvinist, you are wrong.
Now, obviously, I do not think you are religious but I suspect you have the secular equivalent which is "I hold these beliefs, therefore I must be right / good". I find that a dangerous mindset.
Should we dispense with all the waffle? I think we should. If he runs again and gets the Nom will you be rooting for him to win back the White House?
Not really moot. More interesting will be how many of the other 'I'm no fan of Trump but' lads on here will be finding their buts again.
It was more an honesty test. No electrodes but best I can do. Haven't checked the answer yet so I won't go guessing. Fair to the very end, is me.
Yep, that will be grimly fascinating re certain others. But remember I still say - and my money says - he won't be on the 24 ballot. Talk about clinging on to a view in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.
Carolyn Andriano, who testified in the trial of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in New York last month, has claimed that Virginia Giuffre told her in 2001 that she slept with Prince Andrew.
The claims, made in an interview with the Daily Mail, will ratchet up the pressure on the prince, as it is a contemporaneous report of his alleged sexual assault of the then 17-year-old Giuffre. He has vehemently denied the claims and his lawyers have been urging a US judge to dismiss Giuffre’s civil suit against him.
Andriano, then 14 and living in Florida, said she was texted by Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts, before her marriage) in 2001 from London, who claimed she had slept with the prince.
“[Giuffre] said, ‘I got to sleep with him’,” Andriano told the Mail.
I don’t see how Prince Andrew is under any pressure whatsoever. His career is finished and he will go down in history as a disgrace to the House of Windsor.
He’ll never be convicted. He’ll never be cleared. It’s over.
Makes the point that there are no good options for the DoY. The *best* is:
"The prince’s lawyers have taken an aggressive approach to protecting their client. They first argued that the court summons had not been properly served, then attempted to get the case thrown out on the grounds that Giuffre doesn’t live in the US.
Now they are seeking their client’s salvation with the grim fact that he qualifies as a potential defendant in any sex abuse case connected to Epstein. In other words, it appears his possible culpability is being used as his defence.
Even if this legal loophole works, and Kaplan dismisses the case, it will be an outcome that will not clear the prince’s name, which his friends insist is his prime aim. Instead, added to all those letters that come after his title, will be a toxic question mark."
Randy Andy needs to hire this dude's barrister, greatest barrister ever, from 2015.
LONDON - A Saudi millionaire was cleared of raping a teenager after telling the court that he might have accidentally penetrated the 18-year-old when he tripped and fell.
Property developer Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was accused of forcing himself on the teenager as she slept on the sofa in his flat in Maida Vale, west London, in August in 2014.
But he claimed that he might have fallen on top of her while his penis was poking out the top of his underwear,
Jesus Christ! And people are bitching and moaning about that fucking statue...
You either support trial by jury or you don't. It's very simple.
I don't. It's why Andrew Harper's murderers got off with manslaughter, it's why a G Maxwell retrial is quite likely. But thenk God justice prevailed in the OJ Simpson case.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
I disagree. The doubling of rates is I believe based on some extreme examples, eg being on a very heavily discounted rate from one of the aggressive retailers and then ending up on the price cap instead.
But "targeted help" is in general the worst possible thing that creates the poverty trap.
The rich will benefit the least because the amount of tax removed will be a tiny proportion of their income, a bigger proportion of middle incomes and a much bigger proportion of poor ones.
VAT on energy is a regressive tax not a progressive one.
Carolyn Andriano, who testified in the trial of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in New York last month, has claimed that Virginia Giuffre told her in 2001 that she slept with Prince Andrew.
The claims, made in an interview with the Daily Mail, will ratchet up the pressure on the prince, as it is a contemporaneous report of his alleged sexual assault of the then 17-year-old Giuffre. He has vehemently denied the claims and his lawyers have been urging a US judge to dismiss Giuffre’s civil suit against him.
Andriano, then 14 and living in Florida, said she was texted by Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts, before her marriage) in 2001 from London, who claimed she had slept with the prince.
“[Giuffre] said, ‘I got to sleep with him’,” Andriano told the Mail.
Anyone who thinks the Dems attempted a coup to overturn the 2016 election result needs the mendacious or moron test applied to anything they say.
And moron can be safely ruled out. There are no morons on a site where more people than not understand how spacetime struts its stuff!
Well, Kinabalu, you were pontificating this week about how we could not say the Coulston defendants had committed criminal damage because they had been acquitted of the charges.
Since the FBI has not charged anyone with sedition or insurrection, then surely the Jan 6 rioters cannot be accused of sedition and insurrection either if you would apply your own standards to another case? Or that doesn’t work if it doesn’t fit with your views……
I was - can we go with 'pointing out' rather than 'pontificating'? - pointing out that saying one accepts the verdict AND the act was criminal means one doesn't really accept the verdict.
The mental gymnastics needed to map this onto the Jan 6th Capitol proceedings in any meaningful way are not for me on a Saturday night.
What you said was they couldn’t be said to have committed criminal damage because they had been cleared. So all that doing is applying your logic to this.
Much as you are trying to wriggle out of it, your basic problem is that, if we accept your original argument (as I did), then you can’t call the Jan 6 rioters insurrectionists. You can believe they are but you can’t state it as a fact.
Not that hard.
Ed, the topic merits better than this.
You - for reasons you'll know and I can't - have got yourself into such a lather about 'wokeness' and the Dems and the 'libs', that whole side of life, that you are prepared to defend and go along with what no decent person should defend or go along with.
This, my friend, is the truth. You'd be better off speaking it plainly rather than attempting all this softhead sophistry.
Oh Kinabalu, please don’t start with your “I’m a rational, neutral chap who listens to the evidence” stuff. It comes off as slightly patronising and the truth is you are a partisan and a biased one at that, as I am, when it comes to certain issues.
In any event, the truth is you post far more stuff about social issues and your views than I do, which is why I only have 4000 posts and you over 26000. I’ve only been on here as much as I have these past few days because I have COVID and isolating.
I'm not being patronizing, quite the opposite, I'm opining to you clearly and without artifice. You are so consumed with anti-woke culture war stuff that you've signed up to Donald Trump. That's my read in a nutshell and I'll let you know if it changes.
Well, if you think I have signed up to 100% Donald Trump, you haven't read my posts in the past or, more likely, viewed them through a certain prism. I could go on and on but my simple premise has always been this: in a 2 horse race, you choose whom you think is the better candidate and I thought Trump. Does not mean they are perfect which DJT isn't.
I think though it may also reflect differences when it comes to outlook. I'm a Catholic so believe that what you should focus on people's actions and that is how you judge them, and that everyone is a sinner so you should be careful of judgements and seeing things in black and white terms. I suspect your mindset is more Calvinist which, of course, believes that being a Calvinist automatically makes you naturally good, regardless of what you do, and - conversely - that, if you are not a Calvinist, you are wrong.
Now, obviously, I do not think you are religious but I suspect you have the secular equivalent which is "I hold these beliefs, therefore I must be right / good". I find that a dangerous mindset.
Should we dispense with all the waffle? I think we should. If he runs again and gets the Nom will you be rooting for him to win back the White House?
Not really moot. More interesting will be how many of the other 'I'm no fan of Trump but' lads on here will be finding their buts again.
I miss the bevvy who turned up at 3 in the morning to declare victory last year.
Mercifully I slept through the worst of it. By the time I surfaced it was hey stop wait a minute mr postman and the 'lagged blue wave'.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
How do you target the help? UC recipients only? Otherwise it's a big added bureaucracy. And there will be even more outcries from the DT journos about pampering the proles.
You need a substantial change to income tax taper, which, for this purpose, reall means dealing with the NI increase.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
Oh fuck off. It's not a problem unless you choose to make it one.
The virus is going to spread, give grannies booster jabs as often as they need it but if they get infected they get infected.
Grannies can die from flu or common cold or other diseases too. We don't do anything other than give them flu jabs for those.
Risk is a part of life. Viruses we've been vaccinated for spreading is an acceptable risk, if anyone wants to live in a risk free bubble then they should take the steps to do so, not the rest of society.
Anyone who thinks the Dems attempted a coup to overturn the 2016 election result needs the mendacious or moron test applied to anything they say.
And moron can be safely ruled out. There are no morons on a site where more people than not understand how spacetime struts its stuff!
Well, Kinabalu, you were pontificating this week about how we could not say the Coulston defendants had committed criminal damage because they had been acquitted of the charges.
Since the FBI has not charged anyone with sedition or insurrection, then surely the Jan 6 rioters cannot be accused of sedition and insurrection either if you would apply your own standards to another case? Or that doesn’t work if it doesn’t fit with your views……
I was - can we go with 'pointing out' rather than 'pontificating'? - pointing out that saying one accepts the verdict AND the act was criminal means one doesn't really accept the verdict.
The mental gymnastics needed to map this onto the Jan 6th Capitol proceedings in any meaningful way are not for me on a Saturday night.
What you said was they couldn’t be said to have committed criminal damage because they had been cleared. So all that doing is applying your logic to this.
Much as you are trying to wriggle out of it, your basic problem is that, if we accept your original argument (as I did), then you can’t call the Jan 6 rioters insurrectionists. You can believe they are but you can’t state it as a fact.
Not that hard.
Ed, the topic merits better than this.
You - for reasons you'll know and I can't - have got yourself into such a lather about 'wokeness' and the Dems and the 'libs', that whole side of life, that you are prepared to defend and go along with what no decent person should defend or go along with.
This, my friend, is the truth. You'd be better off speaking it plainly rather than attempting all this softhead sophistry.
Oh Kinabalu, please don’t start with your “I’m a rational, neutral chap who listens to the evidence” stuff. It comes off as slightly patronising and the truth is you are a partisan and a biased one at that, as I am, when it comes to certain issues.
In any event, the truth is you post far more stuff about social issues and your views than I do, which is why I only have 4000 posts and you over 26000. I’ve only been on here as much as I have these past few days because I have COVID and isolating.
I'm not being patronizing, quite the opposite, I'm opining to you clearly and without artifice. You are so consumed with anti-woke culture war stuff that you've signed up to Donald Trump. That's my read in a nutshell and I'll let you know if it changes.
Well, if you think I have signed up to 100% Donald Trump, you haven't read my posts in the past or, more likely, viewed them through a certain prism. I could go on and on but my simple premise has always been this: in a 2 horse race, you choose whom you think is the better candidate and I thought Trump. Does not mean they are perfect which DJT isn't.
I think though it may also reflect differences when it comes to outlook. I'm a Catholic so believe that what you should focus on people's actions and that is how you judge them, and that everyone is a sinner so you should be careful of judgements and seeing things in black and white terms. I suspect your mindset is more Calvinist which, of course, believes that being a Calvinist automatically makes you naturally good, regardless of what you do, and - conversely - that, if you are not a Calvinist, you are wrong.
Now, obviously, I do not think you are religious but I suspect you have the secular equivalent which is "I hold these beliefs, therefore I must be right / good". I find that a dangerous mindset.
Should we dispense with all the waffle? I think we should. If he runs again and gets the Nom will you be rooting for him to win back the White House?
Not really moot. More interesting will be how many of the other 'I'm no fan of Trump but' lads on here will be finding their buts again.
I miss the bevvy who turned up at 3 in the morning to declare victory last year.
Mercifully I slept through the worst of it. By the time I surfaced it was hey stop wait a minute mr postman and the 'lagged blue wave'.
I'm hardly one to talk. If I'd slept through the worst of it I would be considerably richer as I made a series of terrible trades in those early hours a Florida came in.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
Oh fuck off. It's not a problem unless you choose to make it one.
The virus is going to spread, give grannies booster jabs as often as they need it but if they get infected they get infected.
Grannies can die from flu or common cold or other diseases too. We don't do anything other than give them flu jabs for those.
Risk is a part of life. Viruses we've been vaccinated for spreading is an acceptable risk, if anyone wants to live in a risk free bubble then they should take the steps to do so, not the rest of society.
Like your namesake blamed the merchant sailors for coming to the CAribbean.
Have you actually read up about him? IT's not far off adopting @DrShipman as a username.
You've got to cut the mass free lateral flow testing at some point - that's inevitable. Given that then it just becomes a question of whether the timing is right.
But it probably depends on whether the government is saying "mass testing is still really important, it's just that we ain't paying for it, that's your problem now" or whether they're saying mass testing in of itself isn't that important going forward.
New infections seem to be on a definite downward path with the peak being 29/12.
Time to talk about removing restrictions.
They do not normally report the total in hospital for the day of the report, i.e. the 8th of Jan on the 8th of Jan, i suspect that this is an 'admin blip' at that is a provisional number that will be revised up.
Possibly - I was surprised to see it reported.
But its interesting that the number on ventilators has been falling - which suggests that those being hospitalised with Omicron are less seriously ill and so are likely to be leaving hospital sooner.
There's also the possibility that the number of anti-vaxxers not previously infected has now reached such minimal levels that they're having less of an effect on hospital numbers.
I'm really not trying to be clever, but is it possible that the number on ventilators is falling at least partly because quite a lot are dying and have no further need for a ventilator? From what I can see there are currently around 850 on ventilators. 1,271 deaths have been reported over the last 7 days (yes, I know that some of these deaths happened more than 7 days ago).
The number on ventilation has been totally flat throughout, you'd think they'd at least need a period on ventilation before dying.
This is an interesting aspect. If the death rate of measuring covid is "died within 28 days of a positive test" then anyone who might have died of another cause, e.g. cancer but also coincidentally had covid at the same time this would be added to the covid tally would it not (please correct me if I am wrong)?
Surely the best way would be saying that someone died due to medical complications related primarily to Covid. This would require a little more interpretation but would give a greater level of confidence in the data
28 days was used, not because of any medical properties - other than the numbers dying with COVID and not of it, kind of balance with those who took so long to die that they were outside the 28 days.
Case of death then ends up as a bit of rabbit hole - COVID will be mentioned on death certificates, but is it the primary cause, a contributory cause, or a may have been... or what. People are arguing endlessly over individual cases.
There is no exact answer. All the statistics are approximate when you dig into them. 28 days is a pretty useful approximation.
Indeed, but if we get to a situation where Omicron infects huge numbers of people there are going to be a large number of people who will become part of the statistic. If I had had a tachycardia unrelated to covid when I had the pox, and had been submitted to hospital and then subsequently went to sing with the choir invisible then I would be one of the statistics even though my demise had nothing to do with the plague!
Deaths where covid is mentioned on the death certificate exceed deaths within 28 days of diagnosis. There are more deaths involving Covid that occur after 28 days than "coincidental" Covid deaths, and I'm afraid it boils my piss that this is never ever ever mentioned by anyone ever.
I recall the death certificates were unreliable though because there was a period when covid was being cured as cause of death regardless of whether it was actually implicated or not
Eh?
GPs were putting covid on the certificate regardless of involvement.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
If aircraft full of antivaxxers were crashing every day, they would presumably be killed instantly and we wouldn't need restrictions. It's their clogging up of the hospitals that's the issue.
I almost never use Twitter but have been for months getting push notifications of Tweets for people I don't follow who clearly have an antivaxx agenda. I don't know why and it's really irritating and I wonder how many other people are getting this bullshit spread to them by Twitter?
This week I've had multiple Tweet push notifications all along the line of "my husband/wife/mother died from an aneurysm/blood clot/heart inflammation days after their booster jab". Clearly bullshit and again not from anyone I follow.
What the hell is Twitter playing at pushing this misinformation and junk to people?
I imagine they’ve tracked that you are anti-restrictions and have correlated that to being anti-vaxx as well
Unless they're somehow scraping posts here and associating them I don't know how they would. I don't discuss politics on Facebook or Twitter or any other social media, only here.
Cookie cross tracking. If you've read articles that are associated to "let's get on with life" in any kind of volume there's about 8 or 9 trackers that will know and sell your profile.
Something has definitely changed with twitter. My timeline is radically different, despite spending the past 2 months looking at bascially nothing political and certainly not lefty loudmouths. Its been literally 90% machine learning papers.
Mine seems to recommend Robert Bowe. Fuck knows why I'd trust an actor regarding covid
John Bowe sorry if anyone wants to follow the mad antivaxxer
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
That's their choice.
We need to stop panicking about Covid and get on with real life. If anyone wants the vaccine they should have three doses by now, if anyone doesn't that's their choice.
What purpose does testing and restrictions actually serve post vaccinations?
I almost never use Twitter but have been for months getting push notifications of Tweets for people I don't follow who clearly have an antivaxx agenda. I don't know why and it's really irritating and I wonder how many other people are getting this bullshit spread to them by Twitter?
This week I've had multiple Tweet push notifications all along the line of "my husband/wife/mother died from an aneurysm/blood clot/heart inflammation days after their booster jab". Clearly bullshit and again not from anyone I follow.
What the hell is Twitter playing at pushing this misinformation and junk to people?
Maybe if you've been liking lots of anti-mask stuff twitter have put 2+2 together and made..well, whatever.
I've not. As I said I almost never use Twitter. I joined in 2009 and have liked a grand total of 10 Tweets in thirteen years. None of which were anti mask or vaxx.
You probably screwed up your privacy settings and Twitter has been “reading” your posts on here
New infections seem to be on a definite downward path with the peak being 29/12.
Time to talk about removing restrictions.
They do not normally report the total in hospital for the day of the report, i.e. the 8th of Jan on the 8th of Jan, i suspect that this is an 'admin blip' at that is a provisional number that will be revised up.
Possibly - I was surprised to see it reported.
But its interesting that the number on ventilators has been falling - which suggests that those being hospitalised with Omicron are less seriously ill and so are likely to be leaving hospital sooner.
There's also the possibility that the number of anti-vaxxers not previously infected has now reached such minimal levels that they're having less of an effect on hospital numbers.
I'm really not trying to be clever, but is it possible that the number on ventilators is falling at least partly because quite a lot are dying and have no further need for a ventilator? From what I can see there are currently around 850 on ventilators. 1,271 deaths have been reported over the last 7 days (yes, I know that some of these deaths happened more than 7 days ago).
The number on ventilation has been totally flat throughout, you'd think they'd at least need a period on ventilation before dying.
This is an interesting aspect. If the death rate of measuring covid is "died within 28 days of a positive test" then anyone who might have died of another cause, e.g. cancer but also coincidentally had covid at the same time this would be added to the covid tally would it not (please correct me if I am wrong)?
Surely the best way would be saying that someone died due to medical complications related primarily to Covid. This would require a little more interpretation but would give a greater level of confidence in the data
28 days was used, not because of any medical properties - other than the numbers dying with COVID and not of it, kind of balance with those who took so long to die that they were outside the 28 days.
Case of death then ends up as a bit of rabbit hole - COVID will be mentioned on death certificates, but is it the primary cause, a contributory cause, or a may have been... or what. People are arguing endlessly over individual cases.
There is no exact answer. All the statistics are approximate when you dig into them. 28 days is a pretty useful approximation.
Indeed, but if we get to a situation where Omicron infects huge numbers of people there are going to be a large number of people who will become part of the statistic. If I had had a tachycardia unrelated to covid when I had the pox, and had been submitted to hospital and then subsequently went to sing with the choir invisible then I would be one of the statistics even though my demise had nothing to do with the plague!
Deaths where covid is mentioned on the death certificate exceed deaths within 28 days of diagnosis. There are more deaths involving Covid that occur after 28 days than "coincidental" Covid deaths, and I'm afraid it boils my piss that this is never ever ever mentioned by anyone ever.
I recall the death certificates were unreliable though because there was a period when covid was being cured as cause of death regardless of whether it was actually implicated or not
Eh?
GPs were putting covid on the certificate regardless of involvement.
But how was it being cured as a cause of death?
Generally speaking, death indicates that there was no cure.
You've got to cut the mass free lateral flow testing at some point - that's inevitable. Given that then it just becomes a question of whether the timing is right.
But it probably depends on whether the government is saying "mass testing is still really important, it's just that we ain't paying for it, that's your problem now" or whether they're saying mass testing in of itself isn't that important going forward.
PLus it means the case stats go down. Problem solved, and the advocates of wholesale death can preen themselves that they were right all along.
You would think if you were going to pull this move, you would at very least lock yourself away for the period to make sure nobody could doubt your claim.
Not saying you are wrong, I have not looked at it.
I just don't see why anybody cares, to me this seems like the most boring story in the would, at the moment.
We Have a Pandemic, that is ether about to explode and overrun healthcare or is finally coming to an end. In Kazakhstan we have an attempted revelation, and a Russian army in a new nation to put it down. and plenty of other stuff.
I get it that most people must be interested in this tennis chap, they must if its getting this much attention, so I must be the exception. but can somebody explain to me why is it interesting, why is it impotent, why does anybody care, please help me understand.
Like every other celebrity story ever, there are a lot of people who are interested in these personalities and it's also a distraction from worse problems.
You can make an argument that anything to do with sports and anything to do with culture is a frivolity and not worthy of any attention when compared to plague, massacres, revolutions, poverty, savage crime and brutal oppression. But does the public want a constant barrage of plague, massacres, revolutions, poverty, savage crime and brutal oppression? Only, one would imagine, the moaning minnies who write letters in green ink to the BBC whenever the news gets delayed by fifteen minutes to accommodate extra time in a football match (and are too stuck up to acknowledge that the presence of a constant 24 hour rolling news channel means that they can get their misery fix all day, regardless.)
Some people are interested in Novak because they follow tennis and he's the best player in the world; others are interested because they have fixed opinions one way or another on the vaccines, and which motivates them to take an interest in his story and either laugh at or bemoan his predicament. And whatever happens it's most unlikely to involve him or anyone else being brutally slaughtered. That's all, really.
Anyone who thinks the Dems attempted a coup to overturn the 2016 election result needs the mendacious or moron test applied to anything they say.
And moron can be safely ruled out. There are no morons on a site where more people than not understand how spacetime struts its stuff!
Well, Kinabalu, you were pontificating this week about how we could not say the Coulston defendants had committed criminal damage because they had been acquitted of the charges.
Since the FBI has not charged anyone with sedition or insurrection, then surely the Jan 6 rioters cannot be accused of sedition and insurrection either if you would apply your own standards to another case? Or that doesn’t work if it doesn’t fit with your views……
I was - can we go with 'pointing out' rather than 'pontificating'? - pointing out that saying one accepts the verdict AND the act was criminal means one doesn't really accept the verdict.
The mental gymnastics needed to map this onto the Jan 6th Capitol proceedings in any meaningful way are not for me on a Saturday night.
What you said was they couldn’t be said to have committed criminal damage because they had been cleared. So all that doing is applying your logic to this.
Much as you are trying to wriggle out of it, your basic problem is that, if we accept your original argument (as I did), then you can’t call the Jan 6 rioters insurrectionists. You can believe they are but you can’t state it as a fact.
Not that hard.
Ed, the topic merits better than this.
You - for reasons you'll know and I can't - have got yourself into such a lather about 'wokeness' and the Dems and the 'libs', that whole side of life, that you are prepared to defend and go along with what no decent person should defend or go along with.
This, my friend, is the truth. You'd be better off speaking it plainly rather than attempting all this softhead sophistry.
Oh Kinabalu, please don’t start with your “I’m a rational, neutral chap who listens to the evidence” stuff. It comes off as slightly patronising and the truth is you are a partisan and a biased one at that, as I am, when it comes to certain issues.
In any event, the truth is you post far more stuff about social issues and your views than I do, which is why I only have 4000 posts and you over 26000. I’ve only been on here as much as I have these past few days because I have COVID and isolating.
I'm not being patronizing, quite the opposite, I'm opining to you clearly and without artifice. You are so consumed with anti-woke culture war stuff that you've signed up to Donald Trump. That's my read in a nutshell and I'll let you know if it changes.
Well, if you think I have signed up to 100% Donald Trump, you haven't read my posts in the past or, more likely, viewed them through a certain prism. I could go on and on but my simple premise has always been this: in a 2 horse race, you choose whom you think is the better candidate and I thought Trump. Does not mean they are perfect which DJT isn't.
I think though it may also reflect differences when it comes to outlook. I'm a Catholic so believe that what you should focus on people's actions and that is how you judge them, and that everyone is a sinner so you should be careful of judgements and seeing things in black and white terms. I suspect your mindset is more Calvinist which, of course, believes that being a Calvinist automatically makes you naturally good, regardless of what you do, and - conversely - that, if you are not a Calvinist, you are wrong.
Now, obviously, I do not think you are religious but I suspect you have the secular equivalent which is "I hold these beliefs, therefore I must be right / good". I find that a dangerous mindset.
Should we dispense with all the waffle? I think we should. If he runs again and gets the Nom will you be rooting for him to win back the White House?
I’ll lay aside my hurt on dissing my theological chat as waffle. On question, it depends who runs. My view is this:
1. I’d prefer if he didn’t run. He’s too decisive and will be older. For the Republicans, I think a Tim Scott would be a good candidate with DeSantis as VP;
2. If he does run, and it’s against Biden or Harris, then, yes, I would back him over either. Both are proving to be even worse than I thought they would be, particularly Biden, whom I thought would be ok-ish;
The postulated 'Calvinist v Catholic' juxta just wasn't helping, interesting though it is.
Well I said IF he gets the Nom, so, ok, that's a caveated yes where the caveat is if it's against Biden or Harris.
Now let's see if we can remove that last caveat. Is there any realistic Dem candidate for 24 who you'd be rooting for to beat the (delete to taste, ie depending if you have any) wannabe fascist strongman / champion for ordinary decent Americans?
At the 2019 election, the Socialists won 108 seats in the 230 seat National Assembly and formed a minority Government with confidence & supply from the Left Bloc (19 seats) and the Communists (12 seats). However, at the end of last October both these parties joined with the rest of the opposition to vote down the budget and that led to the calling of this snap election.
The poll above suggests both the Socialists and Social Democrats will make gains but while the Socialists need only eight for an overall majority, I suspect that won't happen and the gap between the two main parties will close but I also suspect there aren't going to be enough seats for an alternative Government led by the Social Democrats whose usual coalition partner, CDS-PP looks set to record the worst result in its history.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
Who decides who needs It exactly ?
The sort of rise we are going to see, or expecting to see, will have a major impact on many households, not just the poorest who, of course should be helped, but so should many others and characterising it in the terms of people either being poor or rich doesn’t help,as a great many are in between.
iSAGE are going to lose their shit.....only this week they were advocating that we need more, not less, testing and that everybody should take a test every time they leave the house.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
New infections seem to be on a definite downward path with the peak being 29/12.
Time to talk about removing restrictions.
They do not normally report the total in hospital for the day of the report, i.e. the 8th of Jan on the 8th of Jan, i suspect that this is an 'admin blip' at that is a provisional number that will be revised up.
Possibly - I was surprised to see it reported.
But its interesting that the number on ventilators has been falling - which suggests that those being hospitalised with Omicron are less seriously ill and so are likely to be leaving hospital sooner.
There's also the possibility that the number of anti-vaxxers not previously infected has now reached such minimal levels that they're having less of an effect on hospital numbers.
I'm really not trying to be clever, but is it possible that the number on ventilators is falling at least partly because quite a lot are dying and have no further need for a ventilator? From what I can see there are currently around 850 on ventilators. 1,271 deaths have been reported over the last 7 days (yes, I know that some of these deaths happened more than 7 days ago).
The number on ventilation has been totally flat throughout, you'd think they'd at least need a period on ventilation before dying.
This is an interesting aspect. If the death rate of measuring covid is "died within 28 days of a positive test" then anyone who might have died of another cause, e.g. cancer but also coincidentally had covid at the same time this would be added to the covid tally would it not (please correct me if I am wrong)?
Surely the best way would be saying that someone died due to medical complications related primarily to Covid. This would require a little more interpretation but would give a greater level of confidence in the data
28 days was used, not because of any medical properties - other than the numbers dying with COVID and not of it, kind of balance with those who took so long to die that they were outside the 28 days.
Case of death then ends up as a bit of rabbit hole - COVID will be mentioned on death certificates, but is it the primary cause, a contributory cause, or a may have been... or what. People are arguing endlessly over individual cases.
There is no exact answer. All the statistics are approximate when you dig into them. 28 days is a pretty useful approximation.
Indeed, but if we get to a situation where Omicron infects huge numbers of people there are going to be a large number of people who will become part of the statistic. If I had had a tachycardia unrelated to covid when I had the pox, and had been submitted to hospital and then subsequently went to sing with the choir invisible then I would be one of the statistics even though my demise had nothing to do with the plague!
Deaths where covid is mentioned on the death certificate exceed deaths within 28 days of diagnosis. There are more deaths involving Covid that occur after 28 days than "coincidental" Covid deaths, and I'm afraid it boils my piss that this is never ever ever mentioned by anyone ever.
I recall the death certificates were unreliable though because there was a period when covid was being cured as cause of death regardless of whether it was actually implicated or not
Eh?
GPs were putting covid on the certificate regardless of involvement.
But how was it being cured as a cause of death?
Generally speaking, death indicates that there was no cure.
At the 2019 election, the Socialists won 108 seats in the 230 seat National Assembly and formed a minority Government with confidence & supply from the Left Bloc (19 seats) and the Communists (12 seats). However, at the end of last October both these parties joined with the rest of the opposition to vote down the budget and that led to the calling of this snap election.
The poll above suggests both the Socialists and Social Democrats will make gains but while the Socialists need only eight for an overall majority, I suspect that won't happen and the gap between the two main parties will close but I also suspect there aren't going to be enough seats for an alternative Government led by the Social Democrats whose usual coalition partner, CDS-PP looks set to record the worst result in its history.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
It wouldn't be just journalists who got the reduction, would it? That sounds plain bonkers and also very clumsy politics.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
That you know you've had. You may be asymptomatic and spreading flu without knowing it.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
The point is that there's no containing COVID. The genie is out of the bottle already. You're living in a fantasy world where making people stay home will prevent anyone from dying.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
It wouldn't be just journalists who got the reduction, would it? That sounds plain bonkers and also very clumsy politics.
Anyone who thinks the Dems attempted a coup to overturn the 2016 election result needs the mendacious or moron test applied to anything they say.
And moron can be safely ruled out. There are no morons on a site where more people than not understand how spacetime struts its stuff!
Well, Kinabalu, you were pontificating this week about how we could not say the Coulston defendants had committed criminal damage because they had been acquitted of the charges.
Since the FBI has not charged anyone with sedition or insurrection, then surely the Jan 6 rioters cannot be accused of sedition and insurrection either if you would apply your own standards to another case? Or that doesn’t work if it doesn’t fit with your views……
I was - can we go with 'pointing out' rather than 'pontificating'? - pointing out that saying one accepts the verdict AND the act was criminal means one doesn't really accept the verdict.
The mental gymnastics needed to map this onto the Jan 6th Capitol proceedings in any meaningful way are not for me on a Saturday night.
What you said was they couldn’t be said to have committed criminal damage because they had been cleared. So all that doing is applying your logic to this.
Much as you are trying to wriggle out of it, your basic problem is that, if we accept your original argument (as I did), then you can’t call the Jan 6 rioters insurrectionists. You can believe they are but you can’t state it as a fact.
Not that hard.
Ed, the topic merits better than this.
You - for reasons you'll know and I can't - have got yourself into such a lather about 'wokeness' and the Dems and the 'libs', that whole side of life, that you are prepared to defend and go along with what no decent person should defend or go along with.
This, my friend, is the truth. You'd be better off speaking it plainly rather than attempting all this softhead sophistry.
Oh Kinabalu, please don’t start with your “I’m a rational, neutral chap who listens to the evidence” stuff. It comes off as slightly patronising and the truth is you are a partisan and a biased one at that, as I am, when it comes to certain issues.
In any event, the truth is you post far more stuff about social issues and your views than I do, which is why I only have 4000 posts and you over 26000. I’ve only been on here as much as I have these past few days because I have COVID and isolating.
I'm not being patronizing, quite the opposite, I'm opining to you clearly and without artifice. You are so consumed with anti-woke culture war stuff that you've signed up to Donald Trump. That's my read in a nutshell and I'll let you know if it changes.
Well, if you think I have signed up to 100% Donald Trump, you haven't read my posts in the past or, more likely, viewed them through a certain prism. I could go on and on but my simple premise has always been this: in a 2 horse race, you choose whom you think is the better candidate and I thought Trump. Does not mean they are perfect which DJT isn't.
I think though it may also reflect differences when it comes to outlook. I'm a Catholic so believe that what you should focus on people's actions and that is how you judge them, and that everyone is a sinner so you should be careful of judgements and seeing things in black and white terms. I suspect your mindset is more Calvinist which, of course, believes that being a Calvinist automatically makes you naturally good, regardless of what you do, and - conversely - that, if you are not a Calvinist, you are wrong.
Now, obviously, I do not think you are religious but I suspect you have the secular equivalent which is "I hold these beliefs, therefore I must be right / good". I find that a dangerous mindset.
Should we dispense with all the waffle? I think we should. If he runs again and gets the Nom will you be rooting for him to win back the White House?
I’ll lay aside my hurt on dissing my theological chat as waffle. On question, it depends who runs. My view is this:
1. I’d prefer if he didn’t run. He’s too decisive and will be older. For the Republicans, I think a Tim Scott would be a good candidate with DeSantis as VP;
2. If he does run, and it’s against Biden or Harris, then, yes, I would back him over either. Both are proving to be even worse than I thought they would be, particularly Biden, whom I thought would be ok-ish;
The postulated 'Calvinist v Catholic' juxta just wasn't helping, interesting though it is.
Well I said IF he gets the Nom, so, ok, that's a caveated yes where the caveat is if it's against Biden or Harris.
Now let's see if we can remove that last caveat. Is there any realistic Dem candidate for 24 who you'd be rooting for to beat the (delete to taste, ie depending if you have any) wannabe fascist strongman / champion for ordinary decent Americans?
From what can see at the moment re the leading possibles, probably no:
Buttigieg - no; lightweight and his paternal leave thing raises serious questions; Warren - no; Clinton - definitely not; Klobuchar - probably not but wouldn’t mind if she won; Abrams - no way but it would be hilarious to see the Democrats pin the “you didn’t accept your defeat” on Trump when they put forth Ms I’m the Rightful Winner herself;
I’d vote for a Tulsi Gabbard type. I would also have considered voting for Sanders.
Now you can answer my question. Would there be any credible Republican candidate you would vote for if the 2024 nominee was Harris?
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
That you know you've had. You may be asymptomatic and spreading flu without knowing it.
Fair enough; one can't help that; but if I knew I had something I'd damn well not spread it. That's a simple aspect of decent civilised NORMAL LIFE BEFORE COVID so there's no point in whining about LIVE WITH COVID.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
Ave Mario was extremely busy. Really good food but probably not as good as Gloria despite being owned by the same company. Of the three Gloria is the best, Ave Mario a close second and Circolo Popolare a distant third.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
The point is that there's no containing COVID. The genie is out of the bottle already. You're living in a fantasy world where making people stay home will prevent anyone from dying.
It's called personal responsibility, not demented libertarianism. Like I paid for my asbestos garage to be decontaminated properly, I'm not going to knowingly put anyone at risk.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
That you know you've had. You may be asymptomatic and spreading flu without knowing it.
Fair enough; one can't help that; but if I knew I had something I'd damn well not spread it. That's a simple aspect of decent civilised NORMAL LIFE BEFORE COVID so there's no point in whining about LIVE WITH COVID.
But that's why it literally makes no difference whether people with mild symptoms continue living as normal or not. Around half of people who get infected won't even know they have it.
Part of the coronavirus experience should, in my view, be a better understanding not only of one's own health but of the responsibility your actions have on others.
Hauling yourself into work when you're sick may seem (and is often regarded as) mildly heroic but it's not. If you travel on a train or tube and infect other people and cause them to miss work how is that in any way heroic? Most of the occasions I've been ill in the past decade I'm convinced I've got ill on the underground.
Now, I'm lucky - if I need to take a couple of days to get better, I can do that, my employer will understand, I'll get sick pay and so on. There are unfortunately all too many people for whom that doesn't apply. There are people who literally cannot afford to be sick because if they don't work they don't get paid and they need every penny for rent, food, utilities, the family etc.
There are, I suspect, those who would be fired if they missed a day through illness.
That's the reality of employment for a lot of people on low incomes. As I say, I'm fortunate in my middle class admin job. I won't be fired for missing a day through being ill - there are many who aren't that fortunate. Oddly enough, these are the people for whom Labour (and the LDs and others) should be speaking - those who have no union and very little rights and are forced to endure working conditions and hours and pay which make life very hard.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I miss my Grannies, so I don't mean to sound heartless, but isn't that what we've done with influenza for decades, stay in bed when unwell, but otherwise go about our lives as normally as possible. Clearly this means that many thousands of grannies have died every winter because we didn't have lateral flow tests for influenza, and we didn't self-isolate for 10 days after the onset of influenza symptoms.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
It wouldn't be just journalists who got the reduction, would it? That sounds plain bonkers and also very clumsy politics.
Can you say "faux naif"?
I just right now have. Nice sort of phrase. Like it a lot! Now going to look up what it means ...
Between Tony Blair and Jonathan Sumption, Oxford really does produce third rate jurists.
The legal analysis in Sumption's first paragraph would be liable to receive a failing grade if it appeared in a first year undergraduate law essay. Simply put, he does not acknowledge the existence of excuses in the law of criminal damage, which were argued and put to the jury.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
New infections seem to be on a definite downward path with the peak being 29/12.
Time to talk about removing restrictions.
They do not normally report the total in hospital for the day of the report, i.e. the 8th of Jan on the 8th of Jan, i suspect that this is an 'admin blip' at that is a provisional number that will be revised up.
Possibly - I was surprised to see it reported.
But its interesting that the number on ventilators has been falling - which suggests that those being hospitalised with Omicron are less seriously ill and so are likely to be leaving hospital sooner.
There's also the possibility that the number of anti-vaxxers not previously infected has now reached such minimal levels that they're having less of an effect on hospital numbers.
I'm really not trying to be clever, but is it possible that the number on ventilators is falling at least partly because quite a lot are dying and have no further need for a ventilator? From what I can see there are currently around 850 on ventilators. 1,271 deaths have been reported over the last 7 days (yes, I know that some of these deaths happened more than 7 days ago).
The number on ventilation has been totally flat throughout, you'd think they'd at least need a period on ventilation before dying.
This is an interesting aspect. If the death rate of measuring covid is "died within 28 days of a positive test" then anyone who might have died of another cause, e.g. cancer but also coincidentally had covid at the same time this would be added to the covid tally would it not (please correct me if I am wrong)?
Surely the best way would be saying that someone died due to medical complications related primarily to Covid. This would require a little more interpretation but would give a greater level of confidence in the data
28 days was used, not because of any medical properties - other than the numbers dying with COVID and not of it, kind of balance with those who took so long to die that they were outside the 28 days.
Case of death then ends up as a bit of rabbit hole - COVID will be mentioned on death certificates, but is it the primary cause, a contributory cause, or a may have been... or what. People are arguing endlessly over individual cases.
There is no exact answer. All the statistics are approximate when you dig into them. 28 days is a pretty useful approximation.
Indeed, but if we get to a situation where Omicron infects huge numbers of people there are going to be a large number of people who will become part of the statistic. If I had had a tachycardia unrelated to covid when I had the pox, and had been submitted to hospital and then subsequently went to sing with the choir invisible then I would be one of the statistics even though my demise had nothing to do with the plague!
Yes, in the last 28 days something like 20% of Londoners have tested positive for COVID.
The concern therefore is that those in in favour of greater restrictions will point to the "deaths within 28 days of a positive test" even though it is an unreliable stat.
There looked to have been a bit of a decoupling of the ONS series and the dashboard stats for week before Xmas. We'll have to rely on the backwards looking data for a while IMO, same as the with/for hospitalisation report we get on Fridays.
Interesting. IIRC if someone tragically dies when they have HIV/AIDS it is described as a result of complications brought on by HIV/AIDS. One would have thought that a causal link diagnosis could be applied.
Aids doesn’t kill people - it nukes the immune system and makes patients vulnerable to opportunistic infections
Reductio ad absurdum: having their heart scooped out doesn't kill someone, it's lack of oxygen to the brain that does it.
Don’t be silly.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome does exactly what it does on the tin. Makes you vulnerable to other diseases. IIRC, NHL and CMV are the primary killers of people with AIDS.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I miss my Grannies, so I don't mean to sound heartless, but isn't that what we've done with influenza for decades, stay in bed when unwell, but otherwise go about our lives as normally as possible. Clearly this means that many thousands of grannies have died every winter because we didn't have lateral flow tests for influenza, and we didn't self-isolate for 10 days after the onset of influenza symptoms.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
I take the point, but equally it's a matter of knowing. I;'d have been very pleased to have LFTs available for flu iuf I felt unwell before going to visit my elderly parents or other members of their generation.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
I really did try not to. It's called consideration for other folk. Used to be a great big public health thing in the UK. Really did. "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases."
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
If aircraft full of antivaxxers were crashing every day, they would presumably be killed instantly and we wouldn't need restrictions. It's their clogging up of the hospitals that's the issue.
It is slightly amazing and enormously flattering to reflect that while tearing lumps out of each other elsewhere both @BartholomewRoberts and @Carnyx liked that post.
New infections seem to be on a definite downward path with the peak being 29/12.
Time to talk about removing restrictions.
They do not normally report the total in hospital for the day of the report, i.e. the 8th of Jan on the 8th of Jan, i suspect that this is an 'admin blip' at that is a provisional number that will be revised up.
Possibly - I was surprised to see it reported.
But its interesting that the number on ventilators has been falling - which suggests that those being hospitalised with Omicron are less seriously ill and so are likely to be leaving hospital sooner.
There's also the possibility that the number of anti-vaxxers not previously infected has now reached such minimal levels that they're having less of an effect on hospital numbers.
I'm really not trying to be clever, but is it possible that the number on ventilators is falling at least partly because quite a lot are dying and have no further need for a ventilator? From what I can see there are currently around 850 on ventilators. 1,271 deaths have been reported over the last 7 days (yes, I know that some of these deaths happened more than 7 days ago).
The number on ventilation has been totally flat throughout, you'd think they'd at least need a period on ventilation before dying.
This is an interesting aspect. If the death rate of measuring covid is "died within 28 days of a positive test" then anyone who might have died of another cause, e.g. cancer but also coincidentally had covid at the same time this would be added to the covid tally would it not (please correct me if I am wrong)?
Surely the best way would be saying that someone died due to medical complications related primarily to Covid. This would require a little more interpretation but would give a greater level of confidence in the data
28 days was used, not because of any medical properties - other than the numbers dying with COVID and not of it, kind of balance with those who took so long to die that they were outside the 28 days.
Case of death then ends up as a bit of rabbit hole - COVID will be mentioned on death certificates, but is it the primary cause, a contributory cause, or a may have been... or what. People are arguing endlessly over individual cases.
There is no exact answer. All the statistics are approximate when you dig into them. 28 days is a pretty useful approximation.
Indeed, but if we get to a situation where Omicron infects huge numbers of people there are going to be a large number of people who will become part of the statistic. If I had had a tachycardia unrelated to covid when I had the pox, and had been submitted to hospital and then subsequently went to sing with the choir invisible then I would be one of the statistics even though my demise had nothing to do with the plague!
Yes, in the last 28 days something like 20% of Londoners have tested positive for COVID.
The concern therefore is that those in in favour of greater restrictions will point to the "deaths within 28 days of a positive test" even though it is an unreliable stat.
There looked to have been a bit of a decoupling of the ONS series and the dashboard stats for week before Xmas. We'll have to rely on the backwards looking data for a while IMO, same as the with/for hospitalisation report we get on Fridays.
Interesting. IIRC if someone tragically dies when they have HIV/AIDS it is described as a result of complications brought on by HIV/AIDS. One would have thought that a causal link diagnosis could be applied.
Aids doesn’t kill people - it nukes the immune system and makes patients vulnerable to opportunistic infections
Reductio ad absurdum: having their heart scooped out doesn't kill someone, it's lack of oxygen to the brain that does it.
Don’t be silly.
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome does exactly what it does on the tin. Makes you vulnerable to other diseases. IIRC, NHL and CMV are the primary killers of people with AIDS.
Yes, I think we have all known that for about a third of a century by now. Your point is still in the "it's not the fall from 100 storeys that kills you it's the landing" kinda area.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
It wouldn't be just journalists who got the reduction, would it? That sounds plain bonkers and also very clumsy politics.
Can you say "faux naif"?
I just right now have. Nice sort of phrase. Like it a lot! Now going to look up what it means ...
Part of the coronavirus experience should, in my view, be a better understanding not only of one's own health but of the responsibility your actions have on others.
Hauling yourself into work when you're sick may seem (and is often regarded as) mildly heroic but it's not. If you travel on a train or tube and infect other people and cause them to miss work how is that in any way heroic? Most of the occasions I've been ill in the past decade I'm convinced I've got ill on the underground.
Now, I'm lucky - if I need to take a couple of days to get better, I can do that, my employer will understand, I'll get sick pay and so on. There are unfortunately all too many people for whom that doesn't apply. There are people who literally cannot afford to be sick because if they don't work they don't get paid and they need every penny for rent, food, utilities, the family etc.
There are, I suspect, those who would be fired if they missed a day through illness.
That's the reality of employment for a lot of people on low incomes. As I say, I'm fortunate in my middle class admin job. I won't be fired for missing a day through being ill - there are many who aren't that fortunate. Oddly enough, these are the people for whom Labour (and the LDs and others) should be speaking - those who have no union and very little rights and are forced to endure working conditions and hours and pay which make life very hard.
Exactly. They have it shitty. I don't. I see no reason why I should contribute to the wider public disease issue jusdt because I offend some libertarian shite.
Has anyone recently tried to calculate the "pure" and "effective" R numbers for Omicron?
It must be off the dial. One of the most infectious diseases we have ever encountered. Imagine if Omicron had evolved to be more lethal as WELL as more transmissible and vax-evasive. I understand this is far from impossible
We would be staring, this winter, at a true apocalypse. Civilisational collapse
As far as I understand it's actually not that plausible to be more deadly, more transmissible and vax evasive.
There was a quote a year ago from the inventor of the Oxford vaccine along the lines that the way the vaccines worked (targeting the spike protein) meant that anything that evolved to be evade the vaccine shouldn't be as deadly because it wouldn't spike as well.
So it has turned out. Omicron is more evasive but doesn't spike as well hence being dominant in throats rather than lungs and organs. Which makes it less deadly.
Inneressing thing about myxy is how it modifies behaviour. When I were a lad in Lancashire rabbits typically lived in sodding great burrows, 100s if not 1000s strong. Couple of waves of myxy and the warrens are now deserted (and not replaced by fresh ones).
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
If aircraft full of antivaxxers were crashing every day, they would presumably be killed instantly and we wouldn't need restrictions. It's their clogging up of the hospitals that's the issue.
It is slightly amazing and enormously flattering to reflect that while tearing lumps out of each other elsewhere both @BartholomewRoberts and @Carnyx liked that post.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
The point is that there's no containing COVID. The genie is out of the bottle already. You're living in a fantasy world where making people stay home will prevent anyone from dying.
It's called personal responsibility, not demented libertarianism. Like I paid for my asbestos garage to be decontaminated properly, I'm not going to knowingly put anyone at risk.
Wrt asbestos it's also the law. Aside from that, it's not comparable. Half of cases are entirely without symptoms, that's the vector. We're currently testing obsessively and still registering 150k cases per day.
There's "victory" against COVID. We just get on with life and consign testing, isolation and everything else to do with it to the dustbin of history. We don't have mandatory isolation for people with the flu and COVID is now less deadly than the flu and those same people who are at risk from COVID are also at risk from the flu (old people and people with no immune systems).
How do you propose to stop asymptomatic spread of COVID and what is the difference between some old person catching it from someone without symptoms or someone with the sniffles? The result is the same, they catch it and die. It's of little comfort to the dead person that they got it from someone who didn't know.
Part of the coronavirus experience should, in my view, be a better understanding not only of one's own health but of the responsibility your actions have on others.
Hauling yourself into work when you're sick may seem (and is often regarded as) mildly heroic but it's not. If you travel on a train or tube and infect other people and cause them to miss work how is that in any way heroic? Most of the occasions I've been ill in the past decade I'm convinced I've got ill on the underground.
Now, I'm lucky - if I need to take a couple of days to get better, I can do that, my employer will understand, I'll get sick pay and so on. There are unfortunately all too many people for whom that doesn't apply. There are people who literally cannot afford to be sick because if they don't work they don't get paid and they need every penny for rent, food, utilities, the family etc.
There are, I suspect, those who would be fired if they missed a day through illness.
That's the reality of employment for a lot of people on low incomes. As I say, I'm fortunate in my middle class admin job. I won't be fired for missing a day through being ill - there are many who aren't that fortunate. Oddly enough, these are the people for whom Labour (and the LDs and others) should be speaking - those who have no union and very little rights and are forced to endure working conditions and hours and pay which make life very hard.
Getting colds and flu are part of normal life, and trying never to catch them would probably be a bad idea for most people.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
That being the case, why do we have a growing NHS swamping crisis across chunks of the country?
"Its just a cold" is fuck you to the poor sods in the NHS trying to keep people alive.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
I really did try not to. It's called consideration for other folk. Used to be a great big public health thing in the UK. Really did. "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases."
Perhaps someone who knows more about this can confirm or say otherwise, but as I understand it, you are at your most infectious before you show symptoms.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
If aircraft full of antivaxxers were crashing every day, they would presumably be killed instantly and we wouldn't need restrictions. It's their clogging up of the hospitals that's the issue.
It is slightly amazing and enormously flattering to reflect that while tearing lumps out of each other elsewhere both @BartholomewRoberts and @Carnyx liked that post.
It's actually an intelligent post.
The rather less flattering implication of that is that you think some of my posts are not intelligent.
Given such is of course not the case, I am assuming the implication was unintentional.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
The point is that there's no containing COVID. The genie is out of the bottle already. You're living in a fantasy world where making people stay home will prevent anyone from dying.
It's called personal responsibility, not demented libertarianism. Like I paid for my asbestos garage to be decontaminated properly, I'm not going to knowingly put anyone at risk.
Wrt asbestos it's also the law. Aside from that, it's not comparable. Half of cases are entirely without symptoms, that's the vector. We're currently testing obsessively and still registering 150k cases per day.
There's "victory" against COVID. We just get on with life and consign testing, isolation and everything else to do with it to the dustbin of history. We don't have mandatory isolation for people with the flu and COVID is now less deadly than the flu and those same people who are at risk from COVID are also at risk from the flu (old people and people with no immune systems).
How do you propose to stop asymptomatic spread of COVID and what is the difference between some old person catching it from someone without symptoms or someone with the sniffles? The result is the same, they catch it and die. It's of little comfort to the dead person that they got it from someone who didn't know.
The issue is 'knowingly'. Some of us would rush out after a positive test and scatter it around knowingluy like some death-zombie in the London Underground. I wouldn't.
Unknowingly: nothing one can do. But one has to try.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
If aircraft full of antivaxxers were crashing every day, they would presumably be killed instantly and we wouldn't need restrictions. It's their clogging up of the hospitals that's the issue.
It is slightly amazing and enormously flattering to reflect that while tearing lumps out of each other elsewhere both @BartholomewRoberts and @Carnyx liked that post.
It's actually an intelligent post.
The rather less flattering implication of that is that you think some of my posts are not intelligent.
Given such is of course not the case, I am assuming the implication was unintentional.
Quite unintentional; the implicit contrast was with some other posters.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I miss my Grannies, so I don't mean to sound heartless, but isn't that what we've done with influenza for decades, stay in bed when unwell, but otherwise go about our lives as normally as possible. Clearly this means that many thousands of grannies have died every winter because we didn't have lateral flow tests for influenza, and we didn't self-isolate for 10 days after the onset of influenza symptoms.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
I take the point, but equally it's a matter of knowing. I;'d have been very pleased to have LFTs available for flu iuf I felt unwell before going to visit my elderly parents or other members of their generation.
If you felt unwell then would you want to go? This is behaviour that you've previously described as irresponsible.
On the other hand, you could be asymptomatically infected and pass a horrible disease on without your knowing, so if you're going to test then it's no use only doing it when you're feeling unwell. You have to do it the whole time.
That's the trap that we don't want to be falling into as a society: permanent, continuous, whole population testing for an entire panoply of infectious diseases, "just in case." A public health surveillance state full of germophobic hypochondriacs in constant fear of house arrest is not a state of affairs to which we should aspire.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
I really did try not to. It's called consideration for other folk. Used to be a great big public health thing in the UK. Really did. "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases."
Perhaps someone who knows more about this can confirm or say otherwise, but as I understand it, you are at your most infectious before you show symptoms.
Even so, one is still infectious afterward AIUI, so ...
Carolyn Andriano, who testified in the trial of sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in New York last month, has claimed that Virginia Giuffre told her in 2001 that she slept with Prince Andrew.
The claims, made in an interview with the Daily Mail, will ratchet up the pressure on the prince, as it is a contemporaneous report of his alleged sexual assault of the then 17-year-old Giuffre. He has vehemently denied the claims and his lawyers have been urging a US judge to dismiss Giuffre’s civil suit against him.
Andriano, then 14 and living in Florida, said she was texted by Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts, before her marriage) in 2001 from London, who claimed she had slept with the prince.
“[Giuffre] said, ‘I got to sleep with him’,” Andriano told the Mail.
I don’t see how Prince Andrew is under any pressure whatsoever. His career is finished and he will go down in history as a disgrace to the House of Windsor.
He’ll never be convicted. He’ll never be cleared. It’s over.
Makes the point that there are no good options for the DoY. The *best* is:
"The prince’s lawyers have taken an aggressive approach to protecting their client. They first argued that the court summons had not been properly served, then attempted to get the case thrown out on the grounds that Giuffre doesn’t live in the US.
Now they are seeking their client’s salvation with the grim fact that he qualifies as a potential defendant in any sex abuse case connected to Epstein. In other words, it appears his possible culpability is being used as his defence.
Even if this legal loophole works, and Kaplan dismisses the case, it will be an outcome that will not clear the prince’s name, which his friends insist is his prime aim. Instead, added to all those letters that come after his title, will be a toxic question mark."
Randy Andy needs to hire this dude's barrister, greatest barrister ever, from 2015.
LONDON - A Saudi millionaire was cleared of raping a teenager after telling the court that he might have accidentally penetrated the 18-year-old when he tripped and fell.
Property developer Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was accused of forcing himself on the teenager as she slept on the sofa in his flat in Maida Vale, west London, in August in 2014.
But he claimed that he might have fallen on top of her while his penis was poking out the top of his underwear,
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I miss my Grannies, so I don't mean to sound heartless, but isn't that what we've done with influenza for decades, stay in bed when unwell, but otherwise go about our lives as normally as possible. Clearly this means that many thousands of grannies have died every winter because we didn't have lateral flow tests for influenza, and we didn't self-isolate for 10 days after the onset of influenza symptoms.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
I take the point, but equally it's a matter of knowing. I;'d have been very pleased to have LFTs available for flu iuf I felt unwell before going to visit my elderly parents or other members of their generation.
If you felt unwell then would you want to go? This is behaviour that you've previously described as irresponsible.
On the other hand, you could be asymptomatically infected and pass a horrible disease on without your knowing, so if you're going to test then it's no use only doing it when you're feeling unwell. You have to do it the whole time.
That's the trap that we don't want to be falling into as a society: permanent, continuous, whole population testing for an entire panoply of infectious diseases, "just in case." A public health surveillance state full of germophobic hypochondriacs in constant fear of house arrest is not a state of affairs to which we should aspire.
If I were feeling off I wouldn't normally go - but there could be some crisis or problem which arose.
Actually, it is very unusual for me to feel I have a bug of any sort, so even feeling off was a concern in itself, noit for me but for them.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
You're screwing around and with people's lives and livelihoods to avoid spreading a virus that is going to spread either way anyway and for which vaccines have already been distributed.
I don't consider screwing around with people's lives and livelihood to be at all normal, or considerate.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
I really did try not to. It's called consideration for other folk. Used to be a great big public health thing in the UK. Really did. "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases."
Perhaps someone who knows more about this can confirm or say otherwise, but as I understand it, you are at your most infectious before you show symptoms.
If day 0 is the day you get infected then days 1-6 are the most infectious 7-9 less so then from 10 onwards not really at all and day 4 is when the majority of people get symptoms. Around half of the infectious period is before symptoms and for half of all people they don't get symptoms at all (my dad is an example, tested positive for 9 days in a row in the end, not even a cough or sniffles).
Again, the idea that forcing people with the sniffles to stay home will reduce the death rate it's laughable. The reason COVID has spread so fast and so far is that something like 70-80% of the infectious days are when people have no symptoms.
It seems about time. Taking lateral flow tests when not unwell has become a national hobby of sorts.
Does that indicate Plan B measures may end before long?
Not before the Omicron wave has peaked in the hospitals and gone into decline. It's arguable that the restrictions are no longer helping very much but, regardless of whether they do or not, it would appear crass in the extreme to get rid of what have previously been marketed as necessary measures to protect the NHS when the NHS is screaming.
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
Who decides who needs It exactly ?
The sort of rise we are going to see, or expecting to see, will have a major impact on many households, not just the poorest who, of course should be helped, but so should many others and characterising it in the terms of people either being poor or rich doesn’t help,as a great many are in between.
You can argue exactly where to draw the line in providing any extra support but it's not really hard to recognise there's a clear scale. We already use the measures of income and wealth to determine whether a household gets means tested benefits.
Having said that, this is a really tough one to address.
If the projected energy price rises come through, removing VAT isn't going to cut it. I doubt HMG will have any way of mitigating the adverse effect on the population at large. People will blame the government - another reason Starmer will likely be PM after GE24.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
That being the case, why do we have a growing NHS swamping crisis across chunks of the country?
"Its just a cold" is fuck you to the poor sods in the NHS trying to keep people alive.
What NHS swamping crisis?
We have an NHS staffing crisis because people aren't going in to work. What swamping though?
Possibly the more pertinent point on free mass testing is that the government only just the other day announced that 100,000 key workers needed to test daily and would be provided with tests for that.
So if nothing else, announcing the end of free mass testing soon is probably going to cause the usual feeling of government-doesn't-quite-know-what-it's-doing uncertainty.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
The point is that there's no containing COVID. The genie is out of the bottle already. You're living in a fantasy world where making people stay home will prevent anyone from dying.
It's called personal responsibility, not demented libertarianism. Like I paid for my asbestos garage to be decontaminated properly, I'm not going to knowingly put anyone at risk.
Wrt asbestos it's also the law. Aside from that, it's not comparable. Half of cases are entirely without symptoms, that's the vector. We're currently testing obsessively and still registering 150k cases per day.
There's "victory" against COVID. We just get on with life and consign testing, isolation and everything else to do with it to the dustbin of history. We don't have mandatory isolation for people with the flu and COVID is now less deadly than the flu and those same people who are at risk from COVID are also at risk from the flu (old people and people with no immune systems).
How do you propose to stop asymptomatic spread of COVID and what is the difference between some old person catching it from someone without symptoms or someone with the sniffles? The result is the same, they catch it and die. It's of little comfort to the dead person that they got it from someone who didn't know.
The issue is 'knowingly'. Some of us would rush out after a positive test and scatter it around knowingluy like some death-zombie in the London Underground. I wouldn't.
Unknowingly: nothing one can do. But one has to try.
But ultimately that person is still going to die, do you think they care whether they get it from someone who didn't know they had it vs someone that did? They're still dead.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I miss my Grannies, so I don't mean to sound heartless, but isn't that what we've done with influenza for decades, stay in bed when unwell, but otherwise go about our lives as normally as possible. Clearly this means that many thousands of grannies have died every winter because we didn't have lateral flow tests for influenza, and we didn't self-isolate for 10 days after the onset of influenza symptoms.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
I take the point, but equally it's a matter of knowing. I;'d have been very pleased to have LFTs available for flu iuf I felt unwell before going to visit my elderly parents or other members of their generation.
In the Before Times there were various infection control measures put in place at one time or another. I remember seeing reminders about norovirus at the entrance to our local hospital back in the day, for example. And I also once cancelled a visit to my Grandad because I had a cold and didn't want to pass it on to him. And I agree with stodge completely that I hope the pandemic will have seen the end of the martyrs who would drag themselves into work when suffering from a heavy cold and then pass it on to all and sundry.
And yet, we do need to keep our response in proportion to the level of the risk. Is routine mass-testing and mandatory self-isolation enforced by the law proportionate? I really don't think so.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
That being the case, why do we have a growing NHS swamping crisis across chunks of the country?
"Its just a cold" is fuck you to the poor sods in the NHS trying to keep people alive.
The crisis isn’t the patients it’s the staff absences through isolation.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
I really did try not to. It's called consideration for other folk. Used to be a great big public health thing in the UK. Really did. "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases."
Perhaps someone who knows more about this can confirm or say otherwise, but as I understand it, you are at your most infectious before you show symptoms.
If day 0 is the day you get infected then days 1-6 are the most infectious 7-9 less so then from 10 onwards not really at all and day 4 is when the majority of people get symptoms. Around half of the infectious period is before symptoms and for half of all people they don't get symptoms at all (my dad is an example, tested positive for 9 days in a row in the end, not even a cough or sniffles).
Again, the idea that forcing people with the sniffles to stay home will reduce the death rate it's laughable. The reason COVID has spread so fast and so far is that something like 70-80% of the infectious days are when people have no symptoms.
Hang on, you say day 1-3, say 1-4 is typical symptoms. But 1-6 are the most infectious,. 7-9 also somewhat. But even 4/6 is 65% at most, less so if one allows for the tailing off. That's not 70-80%.
Anyone who thinks the Dems attempted a coup to overturn the 2016 election result needs the mendacious or moron test applied to anything they say.
And moron can be safely ruled out. There are no morons on a site where more people than not understand how spacetime struts its stuff!
Well, Kinabalu, you were pontificating this week about how we could not say the Coulston defendants had committed criminal damage because they had been acquitted of the charges.
Since the FBI has not charged anyone with sedition or insurrection, then surely the Jan 6 rioters cannot be accused of sedition and insurrection either if you would apply your own standards to another case? Or that doesn’t work if it doesn’t fit with your views……
I was - can we go with 'pointing out' rather than 'pontificating'? - pointing out that saying one accepts the verdict AND the act was criminal means one doesn't really accept the verdict.
The mental gymnastics needed to map this onto the Jan 6th Capitol proceedings in any meaningful way are not for me on a Saturday night.
What you said was they couldn’t be said to have committed criminal damage because they had been cleared. So all that doing is applying your logic to this.
Much as you are trying to wriggle out of it, your basic problem is that, if we accept your original argument (as I did), then you can’t call the Jan 6 rioters insurrectionists. You can believe they are but you can’t state it as a fact.
Not that hard.
Ed, the topic merits better than this.
You - for reasons you'll know and I can't - have got yourself into such a lather about 'wokeness' and the Dems and the 'libs', that whole side of life, that you are prepared to defend and go along with what no decent person should defend or go along with.
This, my friend, is the truth. You'd be better off speaking it plainly rather than attempting all this softhead sophistry.
Oh Kinabalu, please don’t start with your “I’m a rational, neutral chap who listens to the evidence” stuff. It comes off as slightly patronising and the truth is you are a partisan and a biased one at that, as I am, when it comes to certain issues.
In any event, the truth is you post far more stuff about social issues and your views than I do, which is why I only have 4000 posts and you over 26000. I’ve only been on here as much as I have these past few days because I have COVID and isolating.
I'm not being patronizing, quite the opposite, I'm opining to you clearly and without artifice. You are so consumed with anti-woke culture war stuff that you've signed up to Donald Trump. That's my read in a nutshell and I'll let you know if it changes.
Well, if you think I have signed up to 100% Donald Trump, you haven't read my posts in the past or, more likely, viewed them through a certain prism. I could go on and on but my simple premise has always been this: in a 2 horse race, you choose whom you think is the better candidate and I thought Trump. Does not mean they are perfect which DJT isn't.
I think though it may also reflect differences when it comes to outlook. I'm a Catholic so believe that what you should focus on people's actions and that is how you judge them, and that everyone is a sinner so you should be careful of judgements and seeing things in black and white terms. I suspect your mindset is more Calvinist which, of course, believes that being a Calvinist automatically makes you naturally good, regardless of what you do, and - conversely - that, if you are not a Calvinist, you are wrong.
Now, obviously, I do not think you are religious but I suspect you have the secular equivalent which is "I hold these beliefs, therefore I must be right / good". I find that a dangerous mindset.
Should we dispense with all the waffle? I think we should. If he runs again and gets the Nom will you be rooting for him to win back the White House?
I’ll lay aside my hurt on dissing my theological chat as waffle. On question, it depends who runs. My view is this:
1. I’d prefer if he didn’t run. He’s too decisive and will be older. For the Republicans, I think a Tim Scott would be a good candidate with DeSantis as VP;
2. If he does run, and it’s against Biden or Harris, then, yes, I would back him over either. Both are proving to be even worse than I thought they would be, particularly Biden, whom I thought would be ok-ish;
The postulated 'Calvinist v Catholic' juxta just wasn't helping, interesting though it is.
Well I said IF he gets the Nom, so, ok, that's a caveated yes where the caveat is if it's against Biden or Harris.
Now let's see if we can remove that last caveat. Is there any realistic Dem candidate for 24 who you'd be rooting for to beat the (delete to taste, ie depending if you have any) wannabe fascist strongman / champion for ordinary decent Americans?
From what can see at the moment re the leading possibles, probably no:
Buttigieg - no; lightweight and his paternal leave thing raises serious questions; Warren - no; Clinton - definitely not; Klobuchar - probably not but wouldn’t mind if she won; Abrams - no way but it would be hilarious to see the Democrats pin the “you didn’t accept your defeat” on Trump when they put forth Ms I’m the Rightful Winner herself;
I’d vote for a Tulsi Gabbard type. I would also have considered voting for Sanders.
Now you can answer my question. Would there be any credible Republican candidate you would vote for if the 2024 nominee was Harris?
No because it seems 'credible' in GOP terms means has drunk the Trump kool aid. But I can tell you this. If a Dem president - let's call him David Tramp - had done what the real DT has done and then was running again 4 years later against ANY Republican who I judged not to be an existential threat to democracy, I'd vote Republican. Wouldn't even have to dwell on it. Republican.
This idea that we should 'stop spreading diseases' in winter time is nonsense. Exposure to them is a good thing for our immune system. I've not been sick at all for two years and it doesn't feel right to me. I accept I might be prejudiced, but I trust my common sense on this.
Also, you cant stop turning up to important work meetings because you've got a bad cold etc. Sometimes business needs to be done and you need to go to meetings. Nor should teachers miss school because they have colds. WFH is appropriate for some jobs when people are sick, but having a cold should not be a free pass to stay at home, that is just a road to lost productivity in large parts of the economy.
Report from my local gastropub in north London suburbia.
Packed.
Heading to Ave Mario in a bit, will report back!
William IV was empty earlier, although their crepes remain fantastic
I don’t think you better say “their” crepes to the crepe stand. I think they and the William IV don’t get on.
The William IV now has its own crepe stand… to which we went (the reviews of the other one are full of reports of how rude they are). They said that relations are now “ok” between the two crepesters
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
I miss my Grannies, so I don't mean to sound heartless, but isn't that what we've done with influenza for decades, stay in bed when unwell, but otherwise go about our lives as normally as possible. Clearly this means that many thousands of grannies have died every winter because we didn't have lateral flow tests for influenza, and we didn't self-isolate for 10 days after the onset of influenza symptoms.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
I take the point, but equally it's a matter of knowing. I;'d have been very pleased to have LFTs available for flu iuf I felt unwell before going to visit my elderly parents or other members of their generation.
In the Before Times there were various infection control measures put in place at one time or another. I remember seeing reminders about norovirus at the entrance to our local hospital back in the day, for example. And I also once cancelled a visit to my Grandad because I had a cold and didn't want to pass it on to him. And I agree with stodge completely that I hope the pandemic will have seen the end of the martyrs who would drag themselves into work when suffering from a heavy cold and then pass it on to all and sundry.
And yet, we do need to keep our response in proportion to the level of the risk. Is routine mass-testing and mandatory self-isolation enforced by the law proportionate? I really don't think so.
I'm just saying that if you know you have covid you shouldn't behave in a way to pass it on. Simple as that.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
That being the case, why do we have a growing NHS swamping crisis across chunks of the country?
"Its just a cold" is fuck you to the poor sods in the NHS trying to keep people alive.
The crisis isn’t the patients it’s the staff absences through isolation.
In parts of the country the crisis is staff absences AND hospitalisation heading well north of the previous peak 12 months ago.
What does PB think? I'd go for lat flows on onset of symptoms, reasonable precautions (no pub, WFH) if possible. All voluntary. Plus booster vax every autumn.
Get vaccinated.
Get boosters as often as required.
Stop all other bullshit. Stop testing. Stop isolating.
I've just had the virus and while it was unpleasant for a couple of days, I've had much worse manflu in prior winters. Based on symptoms alone I'd have just taken 48 hours off, not a week.
And killed a few grannies with the spread. What is not bad for you is hellish for others. That's the problem, and no sounding like Bartholomew Roberts of the Pirates talking about merchant sailors resolves that.
And we're straight back to the balance of harms problem again.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
BR doesn't want to stay at home for fivea days. FIVE DAYS. He's happy to spread disease because he can;t be arsed to be responsible. Decent. Civilised.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
I did stay at home for my seven (not five in England, or Scotland AFAIK) days despite being perfectly healthy and as a result our NYE table for seven people and however many hundreds of pounds we'd have spent at our local restaurant we had a table booked for was cancelled.
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
There is this thing about viruses. They spread. To other people.
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
If you get flu bad, you ain't going anywhere.
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
I really did try not to. It's called consideration for other folk. Used to be a great big public health thing in the UK. Really did. "Coughs and sneezes spread diseases."
Perhaps someone who knows more about this can confirm or say otherwise, but as I understand it, you are at your most infectious before you show symptoms.
If day 0 is the day you get infected then days 1-6 are the most infectious 7-9 less so then from 10 onwards not really at all and day 4 is when the majority of people get symptoms. Around half of the infectious period is before symptoms and for half of all people they don't get symptoms at all (my dad is an example, tested positive for 9 days in a row in the end, not even a cough or sniffles).
Again, the idea that forcing people with the sniffles to stay home will reduce the death rate it's laughable. The reason COVID has spread so fast and so far is that something like 70-80% of the infectious days are when people have no symptoms.
Hang on, you say day 1-3, say 1-4 is typical symptoms. But 1-6 are the most infectious,. 7-9 also somewhat. But even 4/6 is 65% at most, less so if one allows for the tailing off. That's not 70-80%.
It might however be a higher proportion of infections since you are more likely to be spreading it when you have no symptoms yourself?
I think there's an Opinium poll tonight, here's some of the supplementaries.
an Opinium poll for the Observer suggests households are already noticing price inflation. About 70% of voters said they had seen their cost of living increase more than their income over the last 12 months, despite reports of pay rises. A majority who voted Tory at the last election (57%) said they backed removing VAT from energy bills.
One in eight voters (12%) would now describe their financial situation as “struggling”, up slightly from 9% from the end of lockdown in April. A huge majority of the public say they have noticed price rises. About 86% have noticed a rise in the overall cost of living, 83% a rise in grocery bills, 80% a rise in energy bills and 59% a rise in council tax.
The issue with removing VAT is it’s gesture politics.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
If only Boris Johnson had made that nuanced argument back in 2016 when he said Brexit meant getting rid of the 5% VAT rate.
Once more he's hoist by one's own petard.
That was in the context of the UK government wanting to eliminate VAT on fuel and being prevented from doing so by EU rules.
It’s very different to cutting VAT to reduce the impact of price increases
The virus itself induces social distancing because meeting anyone is a known unknown. It will change our habits and interpersonal relationships permanently as long as it is in circulation unless really effective antidotes come on stream.
Comments
It's not illegal to be out and about if a relative has Covid and if you don't care about Covid why shouldn't you go out if you want to do so?
Not everyone wants to spend their life living under a rock afraid of every shadow.
Just read the first paragraph as I don't have access to The Times.
Is anybody still attempting to do track and trace? I thought we gave that up months ago? if not I have not heard of anybody being tracked or traced in agais, they cant be doing a good jab.
I remember reading that the average bill is going to double from £600 to £1,200. No idea if that is true but let’s use fir illustrative purposes.
Cutting 5% off the £1,200 saves £60 - which won’t be noticed by the average person in the context of a £600 rise and will benefit the rich more (on the assumption they have higher energy bills).
Far better to use the money - I think someone said £1.4bn - for targeted help at those who need it rather than middle class journalists
By the end of March 2021 - so the end of that winter's waves - we'd had just over 127,000 deaths. So we've had an additional 23,000 deaths since then. Before that we'd had about about 41 and a half thousand deaths in the first wave and summer of 2020 (up to the end of August), so the long winter of 2020/21 saw ~85,500 Covid deaths.
Looking at cases, we identified almost exactly 4 million cases over the long winter of 2020/21. That gives us an observed CFR of a bit more than 2.1%.
Since the end of March 2021, we have identified another 10 million cases, so the observed CFR since then has been 0.23%
We've had so many cases since Omicron became dominant that it looks as though the observed CFR is lower now than when Delta was dominant.
Once more he's hoist by one's own petard.
You can make an argument that anything to do with sports and anything to do with culture is a frivolity and not worthy of any attention when compared to plague, massacres, revolutions, poverty, savage crime and brutal oppression. But does the public want a constant barrage of plague, massacres, revolutions, poverty, savage crime and brutal oppression? Only, one would imagine, the moaning minnies who write letters in green ink to the BBC whenever the news gets delayed by fifteen minutes to accommodate extra time in a football match (and are too stuck up to acknowledge that the presence of a constant 24 hour rolling news channel means that they can get their misery fix all day, regardless.)
Some people are interested in Novak because they follow tennis and he's the best player in the world; others are interested because they have fixed opinions one way or another on the vaccines, and which motivates them to take an interest in his story and either laugh at or bemoan his predicament. And whatever happens it's most unlikely to involve him or anyone else being brutally slaughtered. That's all, really.
Yep, that will be grimly fascinating re certain others. But remember I still say - and my money says - he won't be on the 24 ballot. Talk about clinging on to a view in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary.
But "targeted help" is in general the worst possible thing that creates the poverty trap.
The rich will benefit the least because the amount of tax removed will be a tiny proportion of their income, a bigger proportion of middle incomes and a much bigger proportion of poor ones.
VAT on energy is a regressive tax not a progressive one.
You need a substantial change to income tax taper, which, for this purpose, reall means dealing with the NI increase.
The virus is going to spread, give grannies booster jabs as often as they need it but if they get infected they get infected.
Grannies can die from flu or common cold or other diseases too. We don't do anything other than give them flu jabs for those.
Risk is a part of life. Viruses we've been vaccinated for spreading is an acceptable risk, if anyone wants to live in a risk free bubble then they should take the steps to do so, not the rest of society.
Get boosters as often as required.
Incentivise such behaviour by small financial rewards to those who do the right thing, and significant financial sticks and meaningful restrictions applied only to those who don't.
However, at this point the lifting of testing and restrictions is still a bit down the road given the numbers of deaths. The equivalent of a medium sized airliner containing mainly unvaccinated people randomly crashing somewhere in the UK every day.
Have you actually read up about him? IT's not far off adopting @DrShipman as a username.
But it probably depends on whether the government is saying "mass testing is still really important, it's just that we ain't paying for it, that's your problem now" or whether they're saying mass testing in of itself isn't that important going forward.
We need to stop panicking about Covid and get on with real life. If anyone wants the vaccine they should have three doses by now, if anyone doesn't that's their choice.
What purpose does testing and restrictions actually serve post vaccinations?
Generally speaking, death indicates that there was no cure.
Well I said IF he gets the Nom, so, ok, that's a caveated yes where the caveat is if it's against Biden or Harris.
Now let's see if we can remove that last caveat. Is there any realistic Dem candidate for 24 who you'd be rooting for to beat the (delete to taste, ie depending if you have any) wannabe fascist strongman / champion for ordinary decent Americans?
Time for some real politics - Portugal goes to the polls three weeks tomorrow. The latest poll (changes from the 2019 election):
Socialists: 38% (+2)
Social Democrats 32% (+4)
Left Bloc: 6% (-4)
Unitary Democratic Coalition: 6% (nc)
Enough: 5% (+4)
Liberal Initiative: 5% (+4)
CDS - People's Party: 2% (-2)
People, Animals, Nature: 2% (-1)
At the 2019 election, the Socialists won 108 seats in the 230 seat National Assembly and formed a minority Government with confidence & supply from the Left Bloc (19 seats) and the Communists (12 seats). However, at the end of last October both these parties joined with the rest of the opposition to vote down the budget and that led to the calling of this snap election.
The poll above suggests both the Socialists and Social Democrats will make gains but while the Socialists need only eight for an overall majority, I suspect that won't happen and the gap between the two main parties will close but I also suspect there aren't going to be enough seats for an alternative Government led by the Social Democrats whose usual coalition partner, CDS-PP looks set to record the worst result in its history.
The sort of rise we are going to see, or expecting to see, will have a major impact on many households, not just the poorest who, of course should be helped, but so should many others and characterising it in the terms of people either being poor or rich doesn’t help,as a great many are in between.
Whole population test, trace and isolate to contain a deadly pandemic is one thing. Whole population test, trace and isolate for the rest of time to save the occasional frail oldie or leukaemia patient is quite another.
Having a situation in which we lock everybody up several times a year whenever they catch Covid (or Flu, for that matter, because by your reasoning we should also be testing, tracing and isolating for that deadly illness as well,) means making everyone take several weeks off work every year whether they are ill or not, making children take several weeks off school every year whether they're ill or not, and making it impossible for anyone to plan to do anything in advance, because they're at constant risk of being forced to lock themselves up at home for 7 or 10 days whether they're ill or not. These are significant harms.
Or, to borrow an oft-used example from the last couple of years, you could save every single child that's killed each year by being runover by a car or truck via the simple expedient of banning motor vehicles. It doesn't necessarily follow that this would be a good idea. By your logic the failure to take motor vehicles off the roads means endorsing the cruel slaughter of children to preserve the freedom of motorists, but we all know that's nonsense.
I wouldn't do that (go out after 48hrs) for 'normal' flu - never mind covid.
Buttigieg - no; lightweight and his paternal leave thing raises serious questions;
Warren - no;
Clinton - definitely not;
Klobuchar - probably not but wouldn’t mind if she won;
Abrams - no way but it would be hilarious to see the Democrats pin the “you didn’t accept your defeat” on Trump when they put forth Ms I’m the Rightful Winner herself;
I’d vote for a Tulsi Gabbard type. I would also have considered voting for Sanders.
Now you can answer my question. Would there be any credible Republican candidate you would vote for if the 2024 nominee was Harris?
Had isolation not been a rule then yes I would have gone out.
You may consider disrupting everyone's lives and people's work and businesses etc civilised and decent, I certainly don't.
Hauling yourself into work when you're sick may seem (and is often regarded as) mildly heroic but it's not. If you travel on a train or tube and infect other people and cause them to miss work how is that in any way heroic? Most of the occasions I've been ill in the past decade I'm convinced I've got ill on the underground.
Now, I'm lucky - if I need to take a couple of days to get better, I can do that, my employer will understand, I'll get sick pay and so on. There are unfortunately all too many people for whom that doesn't apply. There are people who literally cannot afford to be sick because if they don't work they don't get paid and they need every penny for rent, food, utilities, the family etc.
There are, I suspect, those who would be fired if they missed a day through illness.
That's the reality of employment for a lot of people on low incomes. As I say, I'm fortunate in my middle class admin job. I won't be fired for missing a day through being ill - there are many who aren't that fortunate. Oddly enough, these are the people for whom Labour (and the LDs and others) should be speaking - those who have no union and very little rights and are forced to endure working conditions and hours and pay which make life very hard.
But, well, that's just part of life, isn't it? There are risks. Infectious diseases will spread, and some people will die of them.
Covid was different during the period March 2020 - March 2021, because it was that much more deadly and infectious than the seasonal flu, but since then we've had our most vulnerable immunised against it, and the risk is much reduced - and so should our response to it. I don't think it is reasonable to continue with massive levels of community testing, and all the other extraordinary interventions, now that vaccines have reduced the risk from Covid to the normal level of seasonal influenza.
If someone in 2019 had suggested introducing lateral flow tests for influenza, and asked everyone to test themselves before meeting anyone else, and isolating for 10 days if they tested positive, and wearing masks when out and about, just in case the negative test was a false negative, or you'd become infectious since you took your test - everyone would have thought they were mad. Despite all the resulting dead grannies from not doing those things.
We've been through a terrible trauma with the pandemic, but we really ought to put some effort into unwinding all the coping mechanisms we adopted to get through it. I almost feel like we have to try and pretend it didn't happen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher
Cancelling a party if I had flu was a COMPLETELY FUCKING NORMAL AND CONSIDERATE action long before covid. I couldn't give a monkey's about the pub - I always paid a cancellation fee if required.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome does exactly what it does on the tin. Makes you vulnerable to other diseases. IIRC, NHL and CMV are the primary killers of people with AIDS.
BNO Newsroom
@BNODesk
BREAKING: Number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 hits 133,000, highest since pandemic began
But are you seriously telling us that you've never gone out when you've had a cold? Because that's what omicron is for the vast majority of people that are symptomatic.
There's "victory" against COVID. We just get on with life and consign testing, isolation and everything else to do with it to the dustbin of history. We don't have mandatory isolation for people with the flu and COVID is now less deadly than the flu and those same people who are at risk from COVID are also at risk from the flu (old people and people with no immune systems).
How do you propose to stop asymptomatic spread of COVID and what is the difference between some old person catching it from someone without symptoms or someone with the sniffles? The result is the same, they catch it and die. It's of little comfort to the dead person that they got it from someone who didn't know.
Does that indicate Plan B measures may end before long?
"Its just a cold" is fuck you to the poor sods in the NHS trying to keep people alive.
Given such is of course not the case, I am assuming the implication was unintentional.
Unknowingly: nothing one can do. But one has to try.
On the other hand, you could be asymptomatically infected and pass a horrible disease on without your knowing, so if you're going to test then it's no use only doing it when you're feeling unwell. You have to do it the whole time.
That's the trap that we don't want to be falling into as a society: permanent, continuous, whole population testing for an entire panoply of infectious diseases, "just in case." A public health surveillance state full of germophobic hypochondriacs in constant fear of house arrest is not a state of affairs to which we should aspire.
I wonder what evidence was given in the 20 minutes when the press was excluded from the court?
Actually, it is very unusual for me to feel I have a bug of any sort, so even feeling off was a concern in itself, noit for me but for them.
I don't consider screwing around with people's lives and livelihood to be at all normal, or considerate.
What the hell is wrong with you?
Again, the idea that forcing people with the sniffles to stay home will reduce the death rate it's laughable. The reason COVID has spread so fast and so far is that something like 70-80% of the infectious days are when people have no symptoms.
Having said that, this is a really tough one to address.
If the projected energy price rises come through, removing VAT isn't going to cut it. I doubt HMG will have any way of mitigating the adverse effect on the population at large. People will blame the government - another reason Starmer will likely be PM after GE24.
We have an NHS staffing crisis because people aren't going in to work. What swamping though?
So if nothing else, announcing the end of free mass testing soon is probably going to cause the usual feeling of government-doesn't-quite-know-what-it's-doing uncertainty.
And yet, we do need to keep our response in proportion to the level of the risk. Is routine mass-testing and mandatory self-isolation enforced by the law proportionate? I really don't think so.
Also, you cant stop turning up to important work meetings because you've got a bad cold etc. Sometimes business needs to be done and you need to go to meetings. Nor should teachers miss school because they have colds. WFH is appropriate for some jobs when people are sick, but having a cold should not be a free pass to stay at home, that is just a road to lost productivity in large parts of the economy.
https://twitter.com/ChrisCEOHopson/status/1479887481352994818?t=WySMgC44Qpyik4jdc4cJZQ&s=19
It’s very different to cutting VAT to reduce the impact of price increases