One of the very much underreported aspects of the Coronavirus regulations was that a new 6 month period was added for remand prisoners in Scotland which simply didn't count. It had been one of the shining glories of the Scottish system for decades that someone remanded in custody should be brought to trial within 140 days of the indictment being served and the indictment has to be served within 80 days of the remand in custody. All of a sudden that 80 days became 262 days. With the discounting provisions this amounts to the equivalent of about a 20 month sentence. The courts were also crystal clear that applications for extensions of these periods would be treated sympathetically and that the backlog of cases from Covid was an entirely legitimate reason.
I have been involved in at least 2 cases where people had been in custody for the best part of a year and then the trial has collapsed on the first or second day because of either an absence of witnesses or witnesses not speaking up to their statements. As these were High Court cases they involved fairly serious crimes but even so they served significant sentences despite being found not guilty. They get no recompense for that.
So far as I am aware this huge reduction in the right to liberty was barely even discussed. And it is still in force.
I do think the first lockdown was probably justified as we didn't know much about the virus at that point and what was going on in China looked absolutely terrible.
As time went on the repeated lockdown became more and more ridiculous.
Hopefully we'll never repeat this social experiment again... the way both PM and LOTO have ended up facing police investigations, not to mention the economic cost and not this dreadful inflation spike, makes me think it's unlikely a government will ever dare implement a national lockdown again.
This is an interesting read. A scientist who has been destroyed by having a consensual sexual relationship, which was not reported to his employer. Was then consequently "Weinstin'ed out of science".
People want to believe these things are more complicated than they seem. That may well be true. But to my mind this is not progress at all - It as a tribal witch hunt, with revolutionary justice being dispatched through kangaroo courts - all masquerading as due process.
If the Republicans can sort themselves out, they will win in 2024.
Actually, the Sabatini story sounds rather complicated. The article presents only one side of the story (Sabatini's).
I am not sure I would draw any conclusions from the article.
Having sex with your postdoc/grad student will get you fired from your job at most Universities. That has been the case for at least a decade.
(Of course, things were different in the past. Otherwise, we would never have heard of Schrodinger or Feynman.)
Having sex with one’s postdoc, i.e. one staff member in a relationship with another, wouldn’t get you fired. A line manager in a relationship with whom they line manage raises HR concerns, but is not forbidden. One would, I presume, be expected to report the relationship up the chain of command and arrange new line management arrangements. A relationship with one’s student is a different matter.
Your postdoc is someone you hired. You will write letters of recommendation for. You will have an enormous influence over his/her future job prospects. You have a mentoring and nurturing role.
You will be fired if you have sex with someone for whom you have professional responsibility.
It is not entirely clear from the Sabatini article, but it seems as though this is what probably happened. She knew him as a grad student, she was hired by him (or encouraged by him to come to his lab as a postdoc). Remember, we just have Sabatini's version of events.
Sex with another academic, another staff member, is slightly different.
However, I personally have never slept with an academic. I recommend this course of action to everyone.
The daily mail have picked up on the story. You keep suggesting that she was his graduate student but as far as I can see, he didn't have any management responsibility for her at the time the events occurred. I think the moral of the story is that it is a bad idea having any sexual relationship with someone you work with.
The article is unclear (which makes me suspicious that Sabatini is not being wholly honest).
However, I am absolutely sure that in the US, sex with a grad student or postdoc gets you fired.
One of my friends was fired as Professor at Berkeley for exactly this reason, about 15 years ago.
He is now a Professor in a Mediterranean country where presumably these matters are looked at with a more lenient eye.
Sabatini will have known the risks.
I agree with you, YBarddCwsc, that the reporting seems biased. It is clear he was fired for more than just having a consensual relationship with a colleague.
It is very easy to fire people in the US. This is because the Right have strongly resisted employee rights for decades (centuries!). Contrary to darkage's earlier suggestion, I don't think it's a vote winner for the Right to suddenly start supporting stronger employee rights, but only for middle-aged male employees wanting to screw younger women.
I also note that US universities work differently to UK universities. UK universities are a bit more like any other place of employment. Concepts like tenure went decades ago. US universities retain more ancient structures that exacerbate the power dynamics.
I know people in US universities. I know a couple where she's head of the lab and he's employed in the lab. They're about the same age, they've been together for years. I know people who have been involved in inappropriate relationships and not been fired. I know plenty of people in UK universities who deserve to be fired!
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
One of the very much underreported aspects of the Coronavirus regulations was that a new 6 month period was added for remand prisoners in Scotland which simply didn't count. It had been one of the shining glories of the Scottish system for decades that someone remanded in custody should be brought to trial within 140 days of the indictment being served and the indictment has to be served within 80 days of the remand in custody. All of a sudden that 80 days became 262 days. With the discounting provisions this amounts to the equivalent of about a 20 month sentence. The courts were also crystal clear that applications for extensions of these periods would be treated sympathetically and that the backlog of cases from Covid was an entirely legitimate reason.
I have been involved in at least 2 cases where people had been in custody for the best part of a year and then the trial has collapsed on the first or second day because of either an absence of witnesses or witnesses not speaking up to their statements. As these were High Court cases they involved fairly serious crimes but even so they served significant sentences despite being found not guilty. They get no recompense for that.
So far as I am aware this huge reduction in the right to liberty was barely even discussed. And it is still in force.
I think the treatment of prisoners has been shocking throughout the UK (in terms of time spent in cells, visitors policy, etc - I'm sure you are very well aware of these).
Another element that will never become a "stat". There will be plenty of other examples.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
You've posted this before and I've agreed that the second graph is closer to reality than the first. Not sure what else you want me to say
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
The issue is the tweaking of the rules/laws/regulations as if they could fine tune R, which was impossible. hence going to the pub wearing a mask, sitting down, take it off, put it on to go to the loo, take it off again...
The perception given was that we could tweak R, when in reality it was much more complex.
I think you perhaps underplay the ill effect of sensationalist media coverage, and the desire of all and sundry to use Covid as political ammunition. But since we are back into a PB Covid bunfight, I'm off for the morning.
One of the very much underreported aspects of the Coronavirus regulations was that a new 6 month period was added for remand prisoners in Scotland which simply didn't count. It had been one of the shining glories of the Scottish system for decades that someone remanded in custody should be brought to trial within 140 days of the indictment being served and the indictment has to be served within 80 days of the remand in custody. All of a sudden that 80 days became 262 days. With the discounting provisions this amounts to the equivalent of about a 20 month sentence. The courts were also crystal clear that applications for extensions of these periods would be treated sympathetically and that the backlog of cases from Covid was an entirely legitimate reason.
I have been involved in at least 2 cases where people had been in custody for the best part of a year and then the trial has collapsed on the first or second day because of either an absence of witnesses or witnesses not speaking up to their statements. As these were High Court cases they involved fairly serious crimes but even so they served significant sentences despite being found not guilty. They get no recompense for that.
So far as I am aware this huge reduction in the right to liberty was barely even discussed. And it is still in force.
I think the treatment of prisoners has been shocking throughout the UK (in terms of time spent in cells, visitors policy, etc - I'm sure you are very well aware of these).
Another element that will never become a "stat". There will be plenty of other examples.
Yes, I have heard and read repeated stories of even remand prisoners spending more than 20 hours a day locked up in their cell as a result of staff shortages in many cases brought about by Covid absences. It is extremely inhumane.
I also agree very much with Applicant and NerysHughes points; the public was firmly in favour of very draconian lockdowns, as seen in polls regularly posted on this site. The media seemed to be even more so, with Sky News (particularly two journalists who, of course, broke the rules for a party) most notably leading the charge.
So unfortunately this is not an easy-to-fix 'Boris is a fool' problem - opposition politicians, and leadership rivals in his own party were almost to a man in favour of longer lasting or more draconian lockdowns. Sturgeon locked down for longer and was praised for being more humane and compassionate than Westminster.
When Andrew Neil joined the GBNews project (which he has of course since left), he pinpointed as one motivation a specific bias in media: the assumption that, whatever the problem in life, we must ask the government what they are going to do about it, even if such government action may have horrendous side-effects.
I think there's something in that. There was of course a very beneficial government action: the single-mindedness of purpose with which the vaccine was pursued and procured. But when all comes out in the wash, I think the societal and economic effects of the draconian lockdowns were greater than any of the short-term benefits.
I can't help being a little bit wary of the approach some of the news interest might take given the LGB (etc) link with transmission, in some recent UK cases at least (which might just be fortuitous, a statistical blip). I remember AIDS only too well.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
You've posted this before and I've agreed that the second graph is closer to reality than the first. Not sure what else you want me to say
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
The issue is the tweaking of the rules/laws/regulations as if they could fine tune R, which was impossible. hence going to the pub wearing a mask, sitting down, take it off, put it on to go to the loo, take it off again...
The perception given was that we could tweak R, when in reality it was much more complex.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Totally agree mate, with PM Starmer we'd probably still have mask mandates and travel restrictions in place today like much of continental Europe. We'd never have had the July 2021 removal of domestic restrictions and we'd have vaccine passports in force for well over a year now.
Whatever else one thinks about Boris, he's the correct PM to have had. Dave and Blair would also have been tended towards freedom as well. PM Starmer, May and Brown would all have cracked down much harder and we'd have been unlikely to ever see the end of COVID measures once they were handed all that control over people's lives. Scottish people have lucked out that the Westminster government has constantly pushed on removing restrictions, otherwise Sturgeon would still have everything in place.
What I'd like to see now is the dismantling of the final COVID measures, I'd order Ofcom to start looking into the removal of social distancing and plastic screens on TV shows etc... Just bin all of the bullshit from COVID.
Press starting to ramp up the monkeyspunkypox fear this morning. It's out there!
Yeah, what's going on with that? My understanding is that Monkeypox was a rare mostly tropical virus that didn't spread very easily at all?
Has it mutated to become more transmissible?
Very doubtful. I mean it's 40 odd cases in half a dozen countries which doesn't suggest easy community transmission, no clusters. It seems to spread via sex, close skin contact, touching infected clothing and they've tagged in some vague thing about 'droplets' and extended face to face contact
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Stopping couples shopping together was surely a good idea with little real cost to anyone. Since the number of shoppers inside was often limited, it would have meant more time queuing outside, and/or would halve the number of transmission vectors inside.
One-way systems probably helped, especially if they stopped moving stuff around for fun. Some supermarket aisles are wider than others, which might make a difference. I don't remember reduced opening hours; was that a local thing?
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
You've posted this before and I've agreed that the second graph is closer to reality than the first. Not sure what else you want me to say
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
The issue is the tweaking of the rules/laws/regulations as if they could fine tune R, which was impossible. hence going to the pub wearing a mask, sitting down, take it off, put it on to go to the loo, take it off again...
The perception given was that we could tweak R, when in reality it was much more complex.
I know someone who still does this.
At a regular monthly gathering of friends.
Which he comes by Eurostar from France to attend.
A well programmed drone who has bought in to all the bullshit on offer
Let’s not forget the devolved administrations who were even more draconian, trying to “outdo England” in imposing restrictions - sometimes to comical effect.
I loved the the lockdowns - could have a lie in, saved a shedload in unbought rail season tickets, had much more productive time on my hands. Can't wait for the next one!
Today's YouGov should terrify the Tories: Labour 39 Conservative 31 LibDem 12 Green 7 SNP 5 Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
I said it would take another two weeks for the big meltdown to begin. Looks like I may have been wrong.
We will get a Teche this morning which might show if there is tentative evidence the Tories have suddenly dropped or if this is YouGov being its usual variety bucket self (it had a one point lead 2 weeks ago). Also worth watching if there is a short term knee jerk 'damn it, the slippery eel got away with it again'
And this months Kantor. Which should bring the smallest gap.and highest Tory share amongst the polls either side.
So what we are watching then, for the moment, not the gap or opposition lead, but the Tory share for a trending lower?
I fear a “slippery eel got away with it” slide is sort of thing to be more permanent than short.
They'd never have got away with the lockdown nonsense for as long as they did if it weren't for the cynical 4pm figure drop eagerly reported by news outlets to keep the fear levels high. I mean, if the winter flu figures were reported each year from Nov to Apr in the same way you'd have people clamouring for lockdown (and I'm not suggesting flu kills as many before anyone jumps on me)
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Those analyses are based on hospitalisations/deaths and are very limited if - as likely - there was a differential behaviour response between e.g. those of working age and those older (who had different options for reducing risk, depending on need or not to go into offices for work, and different baseline risk of hospitalisation and death). In short, those most likely to end up in hospital were likely more voluntarily locked down earlier than the general population.
It's hard to be absolutely certain, before the era of mass testing. However, the trends in cases and hospitalisations for the later peaks are informative on the relationship with lockdown. You need to have a good argument for why there should be a different relationship for the first wave.
The case for restrictions always seemed to me to revolve around the unspoken assumption that the "activity vs R" graph looked something like this:
If, in fact, it looked more like the below, and voluntary action goes past the first break point, then the case for laws rather than guidance is raher weak.
You've posted this before and I've agreed that the second graph is closer to reality than the first. Not sure what else you want me to say
I don't think anyone thought the first graph was correct. Although it does depend how you define 'activity'. If activity was some measure of time exposed (taking into account distances say) then you'd probably get a pretty smooth curve between the two, rather than a straight line.
The issue is the tweaking of the rules/laws/regulations as if they could fine tune R, which was impossible. hence going to the pub wearing a mask, sitting down, take it off, put it on to go to the loo, take it off again...
The perception given was that we could tweak R, when in reality it was much more complex.
Yep, blunt tools.
The pub mask thing still seemed very much in the thinking of spread as via short range droplets, rather than it being truly airbourne. The rules would have made some sense had the former been the case.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Totally agree mate, with PM Starmer we'd probably still have mask mandates and travel restrictions in place today like much of continental Europe. We'd never have had the July 2021 removal of domestic restrictions and we'd have vaccine passports in force for well over a year now.
Whatever else one thinks about Boris, he's the correct PM to have had. Dave and Blair would also have been tended towards freedom as well. PM Starmer, May and Brown would all have cracked down much harder and we'd have been unlikely to ever see the end of COVID measures once they were handed all that control over people's lives. Scottish people have lucked out that the Westminster government has constantly pushed on removing restrictions, otherwise Sturgeon would still have everything in place.
What I'd like to see now is the dismantling of the final COVID measures, I'd order Ofcom to start looking into the removal of social distancing and plastic screens on TV shows etc... Just bin all of the bullshit from COVID.
That's one reason why SKS/Labour may struggle to make hay out of the cost of living crisis... As people know the only thing they'd have done differently to Con would have been to lockdown harder and longer...
Today's YouGov should terrify the Tories: Labour 39 Conservative 31 LibDem 12 Green 7 SNP 5 Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
I said it would take another two weeks for the big meltdown to begin. Looks like I may have been wrong.
We will get a Teche this morning which might show if there is tentative evidence the Tories have suddenly dropped or if this is YouGov being its usual variety bucket self (it had a one point lead 2 weeks ago). Also worth watching if there is a short term knee jerk 'damn it, the slippery eel got away with it again'
And this months Kantor. Which should bring the smallest gap.and highest Tory share amongst the polls either side.
So what we are watching then, for the moment, not the gap or opposition lead, but the Tory share for a trending lower?
I fear a “slippery eel got away with it” slide is sort of thing to be more permanent than short.
Watch the general trends across the range of polls and font read too much into any one poll. All will become clear
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
Old people's homes, care homes, nursing homes and hospices are not all the same thing. Your argument applies solely to the last, and perhaps the second and third depending on the medical condition.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least very a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
And most of them bleated and cried like victims when called out on their bull and undemocratic unaccountable shittery
Interesting summary. The difficulties with the NI protocol are a reflection of the fact that, even six years on, Brexit (and UK post-Brexit policy) are still shapeless and undefined. Because to give them shape, Brexiters must accept trade-offs they pretended did not exist. ~AA https://twitter.com/chrisgreybrexit/status/1527553406679891969
I wonder whether this, obliquely, means that actually only an administration of former Remainers can properly deliver Brexit, because it could resolve issues as they are, without having to defend the lies and policy decisions that created them to start with. ~AA @chrisgreybrexit
Press starting to ramp up the monkeyspunkypox fear this morning. It's out there!
Yeah, what's going on with that? My understanding is that Monkeypox was a rare mostly tropical virus that didn't spread very easily at all?
Has it mutated to become more transmissible?
Very doubtful. I mean it's 40 odd cases in half a dozen countries which doesn't suggest easy community transmission, no clusters. It seems to spread via sex, close skin contact, touching infected clothing and they've tagged in some vague thing about 'droplets' and extended face to face contact
My suspicion is that as its rare people have just started to notice and come forward all at once. Its likely we will get it under control fairly quickly. Covid has unique features which made controlling it so bloody hard - the ability to be pre or assymptomatic and still spread it mainly. Monkey pox does not have that, to the best of my knowledge.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
My issue with the modelling is that some of it truly was shoddy with overly pessimistic* assumptions. Some of it was not, though. The media also share some blame for always reporting the doom scenario, even when a single modelling team had a range of possibilties.
*in some cases, IIRC, mandated by the government, so they share some blame, too
Press starting to ramp up the monkeyspunkypox fear this morning. It's out there!
Yeah, what's going on with that? My understanding is that Monkeypox was a rare mostly tropical virus that didn't spread very easily at all?
Has it mutated to become more transmissible?
Very doubtful. I mean it's 40 odd cases in half a dozen countries which doesn't suggest easy community transmission, no clusters. It seems to spread via sex, close skin contact, touching infected clothing and they've tagged in some vague thing about 'droplets' and extended face to face contact
My suspicion is that as its rare people have just started to notice and come forward all at once. Its likely we will get it under control fairly quickly. Covid has unique features which made controlling it so bloody hard - the ability to be pre or assymptomatic and still spread it mainly. Monkey pox does not have that, to the best of my knowledge.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
I'd add a like but it seems heartless so I'll just nod in agreement, Bart. It's still going on today, Javid has got a really tough job on his hand to get the NHS to give up on these COVID restrictions.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Stopping couples shopping together was surely a good idea with little real cost to anyone. Since the number of shoppers inside was often limited, it would have meant more time queuing outside, and/or would halve the number of transmission vectors inside.
One-way systems probably helped, especially if they stopped moving stuff around for fun. Some supermarket aisles are wider than others, which might make a difference. I don't remember reduced opening hours; was that a local thing?
Stopping couples shopping together meant that my wife and I both had to go into the same shop one after the other sometimes(*) because there are some things that you just can't ask someone to buy for you. And a couple shopping together plus a 2m radius doesn't take up anywhere near as much space as two individuals with theiw own 2m radius circles. And in any case given the primacy of intra-household transmission, I'm not sure how much it could have helped.
One-way systems were definitely counter-productive, if you needed something a third of the way down an aisle you had to walk all the way down one aisle and all the way back up the next, clearly adding to time spent in the shop. I'm quite surprised the supermarkets dropped them so soon, they surely benefitted by routing people down aisles they normally wouldn't visit, triggering impulse purchases.
As for opening hours, all our 24-hour and open-till-11am/midnight supermarkets cut back to 8pm IIRC.
(*) In reality, of course, we sometimes queued up two or three people apart, and then met up once we'd got past the jobsworth on the door.
Let’s not forget the devolved administrations who were even more draconian, trying to “outdo England” in imposing restrictions - sometimes to comical effect.
Whole aisles in supermarkets cordoned off to stop unnecessary purchases 😂😂😂
Absolute clowns.
And their results were no better than ours. But far better to subject your people to needless regs to own the Brit govt.
At a rough guess, 7,500 fewer than biological women do.
This is nuts. Dangerous nuts “increasing inclusivity” for people who are not at risk from the conditions.
It's crazy.
Is it just me or do women seem to be getting "cancelled" even from medical advice relating to potentially life threatening conditions only women can get?
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Totally agree mate, with PM Starmer we'd probably still have mask mandates and travel restrictions in place today like much of continental Europe. We'd never have had the July 2021 removal of domestic restrictions and we'd have vaccine passports in force for well over a year now.
Whatever else one thinks about Boris, he's the correct PM to have had. Dave and Blair would also have been tended towards freedom as well. PM Starmer, May and Brown would all have cracked down much harder and we'd have been unlikely to ever see the end of COVID measures once they were handed all that control over people's lives. Scottish people have lucked out that the Westminster government has constantly pushed on removing restrictions, otherwise Sturgeon would still have everything in place.
What I'd like to see now is the dismantling of the final COVID measures, I'd order Ofcom to start looking into the removal of social distancing and plastic screens on TV shows etc... Just bin all of the bullshit from COVID.
I agree with that post except for the comment about Continental Europe. You refer to restrictions still in existence today compared to us. I can only speak of a couple of countries and that is not correct. Looking at @Leon travel reports it also doesn't seem to be so for the places he has travelled to either. We have all moved on I think.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Today's YouGov should terrify the Tories: Labour 39 Conservative 31 LibDem 12 Green 7 SNP 5 Labour+LibDem+Green on 58% is potential Tory meltdown territory.
I said it would take another two weeks for the big meltdown to begin. Looks like I may have been wrong.
We will get a Teche this morning which might show if there is tentative evidence the Tories have suddenly dropped or if this is YouGov being its usual variety bucket self (it had a one point lead 2 weeks ago). Also worth watching if there is a short term knee jerk 'damn it, the slippery eel got away with it again'
And this months Kantor. Which should bring the smallest gap.and highest Tory share amongst the polls either side.
So what we are watching then, for the moment, not the gap or opposition lead, but the Tory share for a trending lower?
I fear a “slippery eel got away with it” slide is sort of thing to be more permanent than short.
Watch the general trends across the range of polls and font read too much into any one poll. All will become clear
Yes.
At the moment we can say definitely no - no trend of Tory slide, share from most recent polls, Comres no change, Redfield show a 2 point Conservative bounce, mori do show drop, but they measure month on month. And as you imply do Yougov consult humans, or a random number generating computer?
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
Nuremberg style trials is a bit strong. The inquiries do need to look at the rules around scientific advice, briefing to the press and so on. One thing I would do right away is outlaw iSAGE for using that name. You'd never be allowed similar in an election, or in advertising.
I also think the media need to take a good, hard look at themselves. Too often questions at news conferences who all about star reporters trying for a 'gotcha' moment, hence nonsense about pasties and scotch eggs etc. But they won't.
Not bad header. But at the time, the consensus in the country and on PB, save for a precious few people (and I 92% include myself in that latter group) were cheering on the restrictions. Even pre-vaccine, which seems to have been a watershed for some, very few and very few on PB spotted the dangers of lockdown as a principle, rather than the effect it might have on the virus.
Sure, the government saw how in northern Italy people were almost literally dying on the streets but there was always another route short of legal enforcement (with all the pitfalls that @Cyclefree correctly points out).
And then literally one by one on PB people realised that all along it was the principle that was the danger. And now everyone is applauding this article who were huge lockdown fans at the time.
And of course, when reviewing the largest restriction on liberty in living memory, someone is going to say seatbelts.
Is still support the principle of lockdowns, when needed (I think they were needed for periods of this pandemic, particularly pre-vaccine - as I think has been my expressed view throughout).
The laws were rushed, for obvious reasons. The guidelines were incoherent and often nonsensical. I remember going for a walk with my father in law and my son while my wife went for a walk with my mother in law and our daughter, along the same road, a few tens of yards apart because that was, I believe, the law at that point. Clearly that was no difference, from a disease spread point of view, to us all walking together.
I have a lot of sympathy with rushed laws and guidance at the start of the first lockdown. Arguably they should have been drafted and debated early in the year, but I don't think any of us really believed it would get so bad at that point. For the later lockdowns (partly with hindsight) there should have been proper debate and scrutiny in advance of a range of restriction options, from which the government could then choose as needed. Any deviation should require full debate or have a very strict time limit.
Now is the time to do these things, while they are fresh in the mind. Get the epidemiologists to write up some options for different kinds of pathogens, airbourne, surface-spread and sensible restrictions in various levels. Get those voted on and put into a set of restrictions that can be triggered as needed, with a strict time limit before a vote is needed to maintain them. They should also be reviewed with each new government, perhaps. We were caught unprepared, which was understandable, but now is the time to ensure we are better prepared next time and to have the debate about what is and is not acceptable. The epidemiologists should inform that debate, so should the NHS leaders, but also advocacy groups for those who were worst hit by lockdown, those who live alone, who are elderly - or young - and isolated without going into work and socialising. When all that is done, we need the police and CPS to agree guidelines on enforcement and have thes reviewed, to stop the ridiculous harassment we saw of people doing lawful things this time round. Guidance, if issued, should be made clearly distinct from the law: "In addition to the things restricted by law, we also ask you to avoid the following, as much as you can, to reduce spread..."
Great post.
But I still prefer guidance, nudges, education, and appropriate compensation rather than laws. Once the lockdown genie is out of the bottle (too late, I appreciate) then that becomes a policy tool for any number of situations. Ask Walter Wolfgang.
Yep. One of the interesting questions is to what extent guidance, in the absent of laws, would have been effective. Sweden has some interesting data there (more than on relationship between laws and cases/deaths) as there was a big drop in travel etc even though there was little forbidden by law early on. Of course, Sweden is not UK, so there are limits to what can be inferred.
I think there was a need for laws for businesses, i.e. mandating closure of some. Otherwise it's much harder to provide needed support and prevent pressure on employees to come into the office anyway. But another thing to be reviewed. Later rules were less strict on homeworking. If they were still effective, then go with that, I guess.
In the UK, wave 1 of Covid had peaked before lockdown.
Citation ( and a mountain of salt) required.
Peak deaths was the 8th April 2020, 3 weeks back from there is before lockdown
Which assumes an exact 3 weeks to death for every patient - citation for that one?
Your response is exactly the issue that led to the lockdown fanaticism, shouting down anyone who goes against the narrative, of course 3 weeks is not an exact figure for every death, its an average.
The thread header is very well written but it is naive. There isn't any circumstance that any Government in the UK could have avoided lockdown and the other restrictions. The press would have wound the public up to make the Government complete hate figures for causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people. I think the Government probably intorduced the least restrictions it could based on the poor scientific advice and the nightmare press that exists in this country. The most sickening being Kay Burley and Beth Rigby.
I was completely ridiculed on this site for even suggesting that maybe lockdowns wrere not effective in May/June 2020 and now with hindsight people have a different view, but to blame the Government for introducing the lock down when 95% of people and just about all "expert scientists" agreed with it is a bit rich.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Not too many people "of a certain age" at nightclubs and raves and, I believe, such people read the newspapers also.
So lock them down. Voluntarily. Compensate them.
But the principle is more important than the outcome. The country is now accustomed to what were hitherto unprecedented restrictions on liberty. When else might such laws be deployed. We don't know but it's a known unknown or an unknown unknown but it's out there.
To an extent I don't disagree with your analysis, however in the weeks of extremely restrictive lockdowns, the Government indulged in them for what they considered to be reasons of public safety as opposed to an opportunity to impose Soviet style authoritarian controls for the sake of subduing the great unwashed.
PB Libertarians are furiously rewriting history this morning.
Not at all. At some point you have to ask about the quid pro quo. They indulged in them because they worried that the NHS would be overwhelmed and that would not be a good look for any government. And even if they did it from the goodness of their hearts because of public safety I would still question whether such measures were appropriate in terms of the restrictions on liberty.
OK - March 2020 everyone was panicking (not those at Cheltenham or on the Central Line but I digress) and I get that with the pictures from Northern Italy the government went into panic mode also. It was the unknown and a national lockdown was an understandable circuit break. Which is where @Cyclefree's article comes in. Because it was introduced with such cavalier disregard for due process that actually there can be questions asked about its validity as a response given the huge sacrifices in liberty, process and executive power that it entailed.
Dare I say that X thousand deaths were worth the principle of liberty (trying not to over-dramatise)? Perhaps.
Perhaps the lack of due process, despite advance warning of the pandemic from Italy and elsewhere, is that the Prime Minister thinks he is above law and custom, and his chief of staff thought he should be.
Well I yield to no one in my position as foremost believer of Boris to be a useless solipsistic twat but thank the lord he and his evidently libertarian instincts and sheer arrogance were in charge. He still - I think unwillingly - yielded to the 5pm government by Chief Medical Officer but I can't help but thinking that with almost anyone else in charge (saving Steve Baker et al) we would have been in an even worse (ie fewer liberties) position than we were and for longer.
Totally agree mate, with PM Starmer we'd probably still have mask mandates and travel restrictions in place today like much of continental Europe. We'd never have had the July 2021 removal of domestic restrictions and we'd have vaccine passports in force for well over a year now.
Whatever else one thinks about Boris, he's the correct PM to have had. Dave and Blair would also have been tended towards freedom as well. PM Starmer, May and Brown would all have cracked down much harder and we'd have been unlikely to ever see the end of COVID measures once they were handed all that control over people's lives. Scottish people have lucked out that the Westminster government has constantly pushed on removing restrictions, otherwise Sturgeon would still have everything in place.
What I'd like to see now is the dismantling of the final COVID measures, I'd order Ofcom to start looking into the removal of social distancing and plastic screens on TV shows etc... Just bin all of the bullshit from COVID.
I agree with that post except for the comment about Continental Europe. You refer to restrictions still in existence today compared to us. I can only speak of a couple of countries and that is not correct. Looking at @Leon travel reports it also doesn't seem to be so for the places he has travelled to either. We have all moved on I think.
France still requires vaccine passports to enter the country, Italy still requires masks on public transport and in some indoor places, it still has a very wide vaccine passport scheme, Spain still has some mandatory masks in some places. There's a full list somewhere on the EC website I saw and it was quite extensive compared to here which is "nothing".
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
Old people's homes, care homes, nursing homes and hospices are not all the same thing. Your argument applies solely to the last, and perhaps the second and third depending on the medical condition.
Everything I said was true for the Care sector in general.
People have throughout made the BS argument that since the average life expectancy at 80 is 90, that the average death is ten years life lost. But it's utterly wrong, since people who die are not average and otherwise nobody would ever die. The average 80 year old does not live in a Care home, they live in their own home.
For the Care sector in general the median life expectancy is less than twelve months after admission. So locking down for a year or two, just denies most their final months with loved ones.
Death is sad and it hit me hard when my nan died, but death comes to us all and I think it would have been kinder to her if she'd been allowed to see her loved ones in her final months rather than be locked away left to die alone. Even if she'd died sooner, it would still be kinder.
I hate what happened to this country with a passion. It was cruel and unnecessary, unprincipled and wrong. Simply saying "yes but people died" does not make death wrong, or less inevitable, or locking people away from loved ones until they die a kindness.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
Edit: The government of course can and should set whatever rules they want on NDAs or similar for advisors and committee members. They have to weigh those up against possibly losing contributors if too strict. But their decision. The scientists should work (or choose not to work with government) based on the rules in place.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Yes, giving airtime to a communist human behaviour academic who's research includes human behaviour under restrictions to say we need more, longer and in some cases permanent restrictions was not cool.
Better final poll for Labor in the final Newspoll ahead of tomorrow's Australian Federal election. Labor leads 53% to 47% on 2PP. On first preferences it is Labor 36% Coalition 35% Greens 12%.
On the same Newspoll error as 2019 though it would be ALP 50% Coalition 50%.
Morrison and Albanese tied for preferred PM 42% each
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
No, I think if we're ever going to have a "never again" moment then the perpetrators of lockdown need to be very publicly eviscerated. A truth and reconciliation style inquiry will just let them off the hook and they'll be back to briefing The Guardian that "the government killed people" within minutes of it ending.
At a rough guess, 7,500 fewer than biological women do.
This is nuts. Dangerous nuts “increasing inclusivity” for people who are not at risk from the conditions.
It's crazy.
Is it just me or do women seem to be getting "cancelled" even from medical advice relating to potentially life threatening conditions only women can get?
It’s as old as the hills.
It’s “men” telling women, how to think, what to feel and what to do.
The situation in some sports is ridiculous, and in particular I worry about young women being railroaded onto a chemical and surgical pathway some may come to regret. The Cass review is a shocker. Lots of ideology, very little evidence.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
Are you sure about masks? This government document on NPIs for Omicron is far more nuanced:-
Wearing face coverings in as many indoor environments as is practicable will help to reduce transmission. There is clear evidence from studies with individuals that face coverings can substantially reduce emission of the virus and can provide some protection to others, and higher quality, better fitting face coverings are more likely to be effective. This is detailed in a paper discussed at SAGE 96; In the current circumstances it may be necessary to reconsider the wearing of face coverings in places where the balance of risks and benefits did not previously support it, for example primary school classrooms, and for vocal activities such as singing. There is evidence that mandating the use of face coverings is likely to increase adherence.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
I think that's the point of them, Selebian. If we truly want a "never again" moment the scientists who advised the government so poorly, pushed their dodgy models that didn't stand up to scrutiny, the ones who briefed against the agreed position within minutes of Cabinet agreeing it, the ones who simply lied through their teeth on the secondary impacts of lockdown, they all need to go. The only way to achieve that is to eviscerate them publicly, on TV.
Explaining my point - the scientists perpetrated a fraud on the UK and must answer for it.
‘If you have “F*** You Money”, and you don’t say “F*** You”, who’s going to?’ - Joe Rogan.
Yes, we definitely need insight from a bald far right enabler who sells nootropic brain pills that don't do anything to the lackwitted and gullible.
While we are on the subject of American far right hypocrites, the tale of Tucker Carlson lobbying Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown, which is basically a finishing school for the kind of preppy elitist inside the beltway types that Carlson pretends to despise every night on Fox News, is hilarious. What a fucking fraud.
Interesting summary. The difficulties with the NI protocol are a reflection of the fact that, even six years on, Brexit (and UK post-Brexit policy) are still shapeless and undefined. Because to give them shape, Brexiters must accept trade-offs they pretended did not exist. ~AA https://twitter.com/chrisgreybrexit/status/1527553406679891969
I wonder whether this, obliquely, means that actually only an administration of former Remainers can properly deliver Brexit, because it could resolve issues as they are, without having to defend the lies and policy decisions that created them to start with. ~AA @chrisgreybrexit
Business would say this, as it would give them softer, business shaped Brexit, have cake eat it brexit good for them.
At other end of scale, Lord Frost leader of the ERG and arguably only people who understand Brexit and can speak for Brexit, argue that Brexit was freedom to escape the bureaucratic European social model, but we haven’t taken that step, we are still messily shadowing the European social model and actually not done Brexit, hence our problems.
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
Interesting summary. The difficulties with the NI protocol are a reflection of the fact that, even six years on, Brexit (and UK post-Brexit policy) are still shapeless and undefined. Because to give them shape, Brexiters must accept trade-offs they pretended did not exist. ~AA https://twitter.com/chrisgreybrexit/status/1527553406679891969
I wonder whether this, obliquely, means that actually only an administration of former Remainers can properly deliver Brexit, because it could resolve issues as they are, without having to defend the lies and policy decisions that created them to start with. ~AA @chrisgreybrexit
Business would say this, as it would give them softer, business shaped Brexit, have cake eat it brexit good for them.
At other end of scale, Lord Frost leader of the ERG and arguably only people who understand Brexit and can speak for Brexit, argue that Brexit was freedom to escape the bureaucratic European social model, but we haven’t taken that step, we are still messily shadowing the European social model and actually not done Brexit, hence our problems.
More excellent reasons why David Cameron should have insisted that the details of Brexit were nailed down before the referendum, and why, failing that, there should have been a "deal or no deal" referendum rather than Theresa May triggering Article 50 and hoping something would turn up.
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
We can know he would have been worse as he opposed lifting lockdown. He was calling for us to be locked down longer, and harder, like the rest of Europe barring Sweden were too.
He also wanted to prioritise teachers etc ahead of the elderly for vaccines.
Unless you think he was lying when he opposed lifting lockdown and was doing so purely for cynical party political advantage . . .
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
I think that's the point of them, Selebian. If we truly want a "never again" moment the scientists who advised the government so poorly, pushed their dodgy models that didn't stand up to scrutiny, the ones who briefed against the agreed position within minutes of Cabinet agreeing it, the ones who simply lied through their teeth on the secondary impacts of lockdown, they all need to go. The only way to achieve that is to eviscerate them publicly, on TV.
Any who knowingly lied or misrepresented should lose their academic positions. Complete break of scientific ethics and grounds for dismissal. If you have evidence, I suggest you contact their employers.
We'll presumably have Toby Young and co in these Nuremberg style trials, too? Plus that YouTube nurse pushing invermectin and dodgy stats?
I hope you'll spare any of us that may ever have been wrong on PB!
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
Maybe look at what he said with such stuff as the Johnson Variant etc etc
‘If you have “F*** You Money”, and you don’t say “F*** You”, who’s going to?’ - Joe Rogan.
Yes, we definitely need insight from a bald far right enabler who sells nootropic brain pills that don't do anything to the lackwitted and gullible.
While we are on the subject of American far right hypocrites, the tale of Tucker Carlson lobbying Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown, which is basically a finishing school for the kind of preppy elitist inside the beltway types that Carlson pretends to despise every night on Fox News, is hilarious. What a fucking fraud.
That is a weird story. I am totally not surprised at Carlson's conduct but I am surprised that a fucked up crackhead apparently has enough pull to influence admissions at Georgetown.
Better final poll for Labor in the final Newspoll ahead of tomorrow's Australian Federal election. Labor leads 53% to 47% on 2PP. On first preferences it is Labor 36% Coalition 35% Greens 12%.
On the same Newspoll error as 2019 though it would be ALP 50% Coalition 50%.
Morrison and Albanese tied for preferred PM 42% each
Yes. It’s looking like the resolve is the outlier based on recent polls. More recent polls okay for opposition.
However, the polls say it’s so very tight, whoever wins shouldn’t do by much - but as we know, especially this place last time, final results don’t always match polls.
I’m still sticking to my call the government stay in office and I lose my long time bet, my calculation is when a government get as much swing back as we have seen in recent weeks of the campaign, it favours them to defy the final polls.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
Old people's homes, care homes, nursing homes and hospices are not all the same thing. Your argument applies solely to the last, and perhaps the second and third depending on the medical condition.
Everything I said was true for the Care sector in general.
People have throughout made the BS argument that since the average life expectancy at 80 is 90, that the average death is ten years life lost. But it's utterly wrong, since people who die are not average and otherwise nobody would ever die. The average 80 year old does not live in a Care home, they live in their own home.
For the Care sector in general the median life expectancy is less than twelve months after admission. So locking down for a year or two, just denies most their final months with loved ones.
Death is sad and it hit me hard when my nan died, but death comes to us all and I think it would have been kinder to her if she'd been allowed to see her loved ones in her final months rather than be locked away left to die alone. Even if she'd died sooner, it would still be kinder.
I hate what happened to this country with a passion. It was cruel and unnecessary, unprincipled and wrong. Simply saying "yes but people died" does not make death wrong, or less inevitable, or locking people away from loved ones until they die a kindness.
On the otgher hand, anti-lockdown libertarians werew taking the completely opposite position on stats - using the total life expectancy in completely misleading ways.
Nevertheless, you're absolutely right in saying that those entering care homes are not statistically representative of the wider population. Even so, the care homes sector has a very wide range of inhabitants, even in the old folks homes. A friend's mum, for instance, was in one for about 12 years, because she had MS and ultimately died of it, while being bright as a button mentally all the time. That's the opposite of the very real dementia category.
Add to that the legal issues involved and the liability of care home operators.
This is the sort of thing that needs a proper and objective analysis in the future inquiry - and also to be considered in future pandemic planning. If it was not done in past planning, or was ignored, that was a serious omission.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
I think that's the point of them, Selebian. If we truly want a "never again" moment the scientists who advised the government so poorly, pushed their dodgy models that didn't stand up to scrutiny, the ones who briefed against the agreed position within minutes of Cabinet agreeing it, the ones who simply lied through their teeth on the secondary impacts of lockdown, they all need to go. The only way to achieve that is to eviscerate them publicly, on TV.
Any who knowingly lied or misrepresented should lose their academic positions. Complete break of scientific ethics and grounds for dismissal. If you have evidence, I suggest you contact their employers.
We'll presumably have Toby Young and co in these Nuremberg style trials, too? Plus that YouTube nurse pushing invermectin and dodgy stats?
I hope you'll spare any of us that may ever have been wrong on PB!
I absolutely would have those ivermectin idiots and anti-vaxxers in there too if they were in official advisory positions.
And that's the point of the trials, to establish who said what and which rules were broken by the scientists. How can we know what happened until we ask them under oath.
Better final poll for Labor in the final Newspoll ahead of tomorrow's Australian Federal election. Labor leads 53% to 47% on 2PP. On first preferences it is Labor 36% Coalition 35% Greens 12%.
On the same Newspoll error as 2019 though it would be ALP 50% Coalition 50%.
Morrison and Albanese tied for preferred PM 42% each
Yes. It’s looking like the resolve is the outlier based on recent polls. More recent polls okay for opposition.
However, the polls say it’s so very tight, whoever wins shouldn’t do by much - but as we know, especially this place last time, final results don’t always match polls.
I’m still sticking to my call the government stay in office and I lose my long time bet, my calculation is when a government get as much swing back as we have seen in recent weeks of the campaign, it favours them to defy the final polls.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
I think that's the point of them, Selebian. If we truly want a "never again" moment the scientists who advised the government so poorly, pushed their dodgy models that didn't stand up to scrutiny, the ones who briefed against the agreed position within minutes of Cabinet agreeing it, the ones who simply lied through their teeth on the secondary impacts of lockdown, they all need to go. The only way to achieve that is to eviscerate them publicly, on TV.
Any who knowingly lied or misrepresented should lose their academic positions. Complete break of scientific ethics and grounds for dismissal. If you have evidence, I suggest you contact their employers.
We'll presumably have Toby Young and co in these Nuremberg style trials, too? Plus that YouTube nurse pushing invermectin and dodgy stats?
I hope you'll spare any of us that may ever have been wrong on PB!
You won't be spared from the witch hunt on here.
It's like fucking McCarthyism: "Are you, or have you ever been, a scientist?"
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
I think that's the point of them, Selebian. If we truly want a "never again" moment the scientists who advised the government so poorly, pushed their dodgy models that didn't stand up to scrutiny, the ones who briefed against the agreed position within minutes of Cabinet agreeing it, the ones who simply lied through their teeth on the secondary impacts of lockdown, they all need to go. The only way to achieve that is to eviscerate them publicly, on TV.
Any who knowingly lied or misrepresented should lose their academic positions. Complete break of scientific ethics and grounds for dismissal. If you have evidence, I suggest you contact their employers.
We'll presumably have Toby Young and co in these Nuremberg style trials, too? Plus that YouTube nurse pushing invermectin and dodgy stats?
I hope you'll spare any of us that may ever have been wrong on PB!
You won't be spared from the witch hunt on here.
It's like fucking McCarthyism: "Are you, or have you ever been, a scientist?"
Almost as if a government of Tory journalists had to be protected and deflected from at all costs.
"Rishi Sunak becomes first frontline politician to join The Sunday Times Rich List The chancellor and his wife’s wealth is estimated at £730 million" (£)
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
We can know he would have been worse as he opposed lifting lockdown. He was calling for us to be locked down longer, and harder, like the rest of Europe barring Sweden were too.
He also wanted to prioritise teachers etc ahead of the elderly for vaccines.
Unless you think he was lying when he opposed lifting lockdown and was doing so purely for cynical party political advantage . . .
At that point, his stance on covid was "open the zoos, kill the old".
One staffer told me: “I'm shocked he (the PM) only got 1 fine to say how many speeches he gave out at several (events) and how many he stayed for a drink at.” Said they are “sceptical” about how fines had been distributed. https://twitter.com/peston/status/1527583568263884802
Better final poll for Labor in the final Newspoll ahead of tomorrow's Australian Federal election. Labor leads 53% to 47% on 2PP. On first preferences it is Labor 36% Coalition 35% Greens 12%.
On the same Newspoll error as 2019 though it would be ALP 50% Coalition 50%.
Morrison and Albanese tied for preferred PM 42% each
Yes. It’s looking like the resolve is the outlier based on recent polls. More recent polls okay for opposition.
However, the polls say it’s so very tight, whoever wins shouldn’t do by much - but as we know, especially this place last time, final results don’t always match polls.
I’m still sticking to my call the government stay in office and I lose my long time bet, my calculation is when a government get as much swing back as we have seen in recent weeks of the campaign, it favours them to defy the final polls.
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
Especially the deluded idea that Britain would have been freed by the hypothetical LotO, the upright, principled and willing to be unpopular... oh wait, they meant Bozo.
One (not legal) restriction (I'm unsure if it was government advice or they all just decided to do it) which seemed counterproductive to me was that all the supermarkets cut their opening hours. The effect of this was surely to cram the same number of people who needed to do their shopping into fewer hours, therefore increasing the average number of people in the shops at any one time, and thus lengthening the queues.
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Yeah but COVID only travels one way, everyone knows that Applicant.
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
I’m mostly in favour of a ‘truth and reconcilliation’ enquiry, trying to learn lessons rather than blame people, and participants not turning up with their lawyers.
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
Or, indeed, just an independent inquiry.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
I think that's the point of them, Selebian. If we truly want a "never again" moment the scientists who advised the government so poorly, pushed their dodgy models that didn't stand up to scrutiny, the ones who briefed against the agreed position within minutes of Cabinet agreeing it, the ones who simply lied through their teeth on the secondary impacts of lockdown, they all need to go. The only way to achieve that is to eviscerate them publicly, on TV.
Any who knowingly lied or misrepresented should lose their academic positions. Complete break of scientific ethics and grounds for dismissal. If you have evidence, I suggest you contact their employers.
We'll presumably have Toby Young and co in these Nuremberg style trials, too? Plus that YouTube nurse pushing invermectin and dodgy stats?
I hope you'll spare any of us that may ever have been wrong on PB!
I absolutely would have those ivermectin idiots and anti-vaxxers in there too if they were in official advisory positions.
And that's the point of the trials, to establish who said what and which rules were broken by the scientists. How can we know what happened until we ask them under oath.
Special prize for Adam Finn who did his best to make it appear the vaccine was risky for kids.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
Old people's homes, care homes, nursing homes and hospices are not all the same thing. Your argument applies solely to the last, and perhaps the second and third depending on the medical condition.
Everything I said was true for the Care sector in general.
People have throughout made the BS argument that since the average life expectancy at 80 is 90, that the average death is ten years life lost. But it's utterly wrong, since people who die are not average and otherwise nobody would ever die. The average 80 year old does not live in a Care home, they live in their own home.
For the Care sector in general the median life expectancy is less than twelve months after admission. So locking down for a year or two, just denies most their final months with loved ones.
Death is sad and it hit me hard when my nan died, but death comes to us all and I think it would have been kinder to her if she'd been allowed to see her loved ones in her final months rather than be locked away left to die alone. Even if she'd died sooner, it would still be kinder.
I hate what happened to this country with a passion. It was cruel and unnecessary, unprincipled and wrong. Simply saying "yes but people died" does not make death wrong, or less inevitable, or locking people away from loved ones until they die a kindness.
On the otgher hand, anti-lockdown libertarians werew taking the completely opposite position on stats - using the total life expectancy in completely misleading ways.
Nevertheless, you're absolutely right in saying that those entering care homes are not statistically representative of the wider population. Even so, the care homes sector has a very wide range of inhabitants, even in the old folks homes. A friend's mum, for instance, was in one for about 12 years, because she had MS and ultimately died of it, while being bright as a button mentally all the time. That's the opposite of the very real dementia category.
Add to that the legal issues involved and the liability of care home operators.
This is the sort of thing that needs a proper and objective analysis in the future inquiry - and also to be considered in future pandemic planning. If it was not done in past planning, or was ignored, that was a serious omission.
Indeed it is complicated but on average your friends mum is the exception and not the norm.
Part of the problem is that people can be too precious about death and treat every death as a tragedy, but there are tragedies worse than death.
The media facilitates this. Soft sob stories interviewing "bereaved" families and "blaming" their deaths etc as if the deaths should have been prevented.
The amount of interviews of things like "my 98 year old father/grandfather etc caught COVID in a Care Home and died, he should have been protected". Sorry to be harsh, but death was coming for your 98 year old relative either way, if not now it wasn't much further away - what we should have been doing is allowing them to make the most of whatever precious time they had left, not denying them visitors so they died alone and cut off from loved ones.
Better final poll for Labor in the final Newspoll ahead of tomorrow's Australian Federal election. Labor leads 53% to 47% on 2PP. On first preferences it is Labor 36% Coalition 35% Greens 12%.
On the same Newspoll error as 2019 though it would be ALP 50% Coalition 50%.
Morrison and Albanese tied for preferred PM 42% each
Yes. It’s looking like the resolve is the outlier based on recent polls. More recent polls okay for opposition.
However, the polls say it’s so very tight, whoever wins shouldn’t do by much - but as we know, especially this place last time, final results don’t always match polls.
I’m still sticking to my call the government stay in office and I lose my long time bet, my calculation is when a government get as much swing back as we have seen in recent weeks of the campaign, it favours them to defy the final polls.
I am going hung parliament.
We will find out tomorrow
I'm forecasting a 3 seat Labor majority atm. 77 seats to 74.
At a rough guess, 7,500 fewer than biological women do.
This is nuts. Dangerous nuts “increasing inclusivity” for people who are not at risk from the conditions.
In some cases, the new advice looks clearer than the old, although I can't see why the word woman should not be used. We need to avoid quasi-mystical debates about what is a woman. Women (see, I've used that word) who have had a hysterectomy are presumably not any longer at risk of womb cancer; are they not real women?
The Mail's slightly hysterical coverage shows in: "However, in an update sneaked out in January — which campaigners only uncovered this week — both lines were removed."
Sneaked out by being openly published on the web!
And the NHS page on ovarian cancer does go on to say:- Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer. This includes women, trans men, non-binary people and intersex people with ovaries.
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
We had a Borisite poster on here a few days ago proclaiming that, although Boris's authoritarian lockdown was a social, economic and psychological catastrophe, the fact that Sir Keir would have been worse proved was a 'libertine' hero Boris was. I suppose it's just a way of fitting the square peg of Dream Boris into the round hole of Actual Boris.
‘If you have “F*** You Money”, and you don’t say “F*** You”, who’s going to?’ - Joe Rogan.
Yes, we definitely need insight from a bald far right enabler who sells nootropic brain pills that don't do anything to the lackwitted and gullible.
While we are on the subject of American far right hypocrites, the tale of Tucker Carlson lobbying Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown, which is basically a finishing school for the kind of preppy elitist inside the beltway types that Carlson pretends to despise every night on Fox News, is hilarious. What a fucking fraud.
That is a weird story. I am totally not surprised at Carlson's conduct but I am surprised that a fucked up crackhead apparently has enough pull to influence admissions at Georgetown.
Well Carlson's son eventually went to the University of Virginia so perhaps he didn't. There is a strong element of projection, perhaps even self-hatred, among these right wing "anti elitists". Of course it's all just performative nonsense designed to deflect the pitchfork-wielding mob from their true enemies.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
There was a fucking communist on SAGE who confessed she wanted to reorder society to fit her idiot Marxist theories. Ugh
I see SKS is getting quite a lot of flak over Covid lockdowns, and many PBers are absolutely certain that things would have been worse had he been PM. How on earth do you know? You can't. He wasn't PM; he was LOTO, and opposition is a key word here.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
We had a Borisite poster on here a few days ago proclaiming that, although Boris's authoritarian lockdown was a social, economic and psychological catastrophe, the fact that Sir Keir would have been worse proved was a 'libertine' hero Boris was. I suppose it's just a way of fitting the square peg of Dream Boris into the round hole of Actual Boris.
Same on this thread, and many others. Boris is a nightmare but Starmer, Corbyn, May or Brown, depending on the writer's prejudices, would undoubtedly have been worse.
‘If you have “F*** You Money”, and you don’t say “F*** You”, who’s going to?’ - Joe Rogan.
Yes, we definitely need insight from a bald far right enabler who sells nootropic brain pills that don't do anything to the lackwitted and gullible.
While we are on the subject of American far right hypocrites, the tale of Tucker Carlson lobbying Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown, which is basically a finishing school for the kind of preppy elitist inside the beltway types that Carlson pretends to despise every night on Fox News, is hilarious. What a fucking fraud.
Why are you surprised - in between declaring the other side is the devil incarnate, let's do business.
The ultimate example of this is in Northern Ireland - where the Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries have carved up various illegal businesses. They have worked together with remarkably little friction, on drug dealing, for years.
‘If you have “F*** You Money”, and you don’t say “F*** You”, who’s going to?’ - Joe Rogan.
Yes, we definitely need insight from a bald far right enabler who sells nootropic brain pills that don't do anything to the lackwitted and gullible.
While we are on the subject of American far right hypocrites, the tale of Tucker Carlson lobbying Hunter Biden to get his son into Georgetown, which is basically a finishing school for the kind of preppy elitist inside the beltway types that Carlson pretends to despise every night on Fox News, is hilarious. What a fucking fraud.
Why are you surprised - in between declaring the other side is the devil incarnate, let's do business.
The ultimate example of this is in Northern Ireland - where the Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries have carved up various illegal businesses. They have worked together with remarkably little friction, on drug dealing, for years.
Oh I am utterly not surprised. These Republican anti elitists are the most full of shit people you will ever come across.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
Hmm, we need an Actuary to pop up and pick this apart.
This will all be in the distribution. The median age of death is about 3 years higher, and the modal higher still.
There is also the measurement error in determining what people actually died of (rather than with), and the conversion to loss of QALYs.
According to Bart, old people die anyway, so what's the problem?
Let's be frank, people with dementia go into a Care Home to be comforted and looked after until they die, not to be treated, recover and go home. Indeed most admissions die within twelve months, of which my nan was within that number too.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
Old people's homes, care homes, nursing homes and hospices are not all the same thing. Your argument applies solely to the last, and perhaps the second and third depending on the medical condition.
Everything I said was true for the Care sector in general.
People have throughout made the BS argument that since the average life expectancy at 80 is 90, that the average death is ten years life lost. But it's utterly wrong, since people who die are not average and otherwise nobody would ever die. The average 80 year old does not live in a Care home, they live in their own home.
For the Care sector in general the median life expectancy is less than twelve months after admission. So locking down for a year or two, just denies most their final months with loved ones.
Death is sad and it hit me hard when my nan died, but death comes to us all and I think it would have been kinder to her if she'd been allowed to see her loved ones in her final months rather than be locked away left to die alone. Even if she'd died sooner, it would still be kinder.
I hate what happened to this country with a passion. It was cruel and unnecessary, unprincipled and wrong. Simply saying "yes but people died" does not make death wrong, or less inevitable, or locking people away from loved ones until they die a kindness.
On the otgher hand, anti-lockdown libertarians werew taking the completely opposite position on stats - using the total life expectancy in completely misleading ways.
Nevertheless, you're absolutely right in saying that those entering care homes are not statistically representative of the wider population. Even so, the care homes sector has a very wide range of inhabitants, even in the old folks homes. A friend's mum, for instance, was in one for about 12 years, because she had MS and ultimately died of it, while being bright as a button mentally all the time. That's the opposite of the very real dementia category.
Add to that the legal issues involved and the liability of care home operators.
This is the sort of thing that needs a proper and objective analysis in the future inquiry - and also to be considered in future pandemic planning. If it was not done in past planning, or was ignored, that was a serious omission.
Indeed it is complicated but on average your friends mum is the exception and not the norm.
Part of the problem is that people can be too precious about death and treat every death as a tragedy, but there are tragedies worse than death.
The media facilitates this. Soft sob stories interviewing "bereaved" families and "blaming" their deaths etc as if the deaths should have been prevented.
The amount of interviews of things like "my 98 year old father/grandfather etc caught COVID in a Care Home and died, he should have been protected". Sorry to be harsh, but death was coming for your 98 year old relative either way, if not now it wasn't much further away - what we should have been doing is allowing them to make the most of whatever precious time they had left, not denying them visitors so they died alone and cut off from loved ones.
Less of the "died" please; "passed" is the sickly euphemism de nos jours.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
There was a fucking communist on SAGE who confessed she wanted to reorder society to fit her idiot Marxist theories. Ugh
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
The funny thing is you would have been cancelled for saying this even a year ago. Now of course the two groups aren't like for like because we're talking about life expectancy at circa 80, which is longer.
The problem is that people draw the wrong conclusion from that statistic. They think it means that Covid only killed people who were about to die anyway.
Whereas what it means is that it increases everyone's probability of death proportional to their existing risk of death. I think it was once estimated that catching Covid was equal to a year's worth of all-fatality risk for all age groups.
The polls do show a trend away from the conservatives but why anybody should be surprised I really do not know
Forget partygate and beergate , every day voters are seeing price rises they have never experienced before and are frightened
All we hear from Boris and Rishi is that help is coming at some ill defined later date and to be honest they are so utterly out of touch they have gifted the narrative to labour
Rishi appearing on the rich list just compounds opinion, though I do not think his wife's' wealth should be relevant
In years to come the last few months, Ukraine excepted, will be an example by those teaching politics how to do a right royal 'Ratner' on your brand
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
The funny thing is you would have been cancelled for saying this even a year ago. Now of course the two groups aren't like for like because we're talking about life expectancy at circa 80, which is longer.
The problem is that people draw the wrong conclusion from that statistic. They think it means that Covid only killed people who were about to die anyway.
Whereas what it means is that it increases everyone's probability of death proportional to their existing risk of death. I think it was once estimated that catching Covid was equal to a year's worth of all-fatality risk for all age groups.
In which case it'd be better to let COVID spread to everyone, while those who want to shield try to do so, than have two years of restrictions.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
The funny thing is you would have been cancelled for saying this even a year ago. Now of course the two groups aren't like for like because we're talking about life expectancy at circa 80, which is longer.
The problem is that people draw the wrong conclusion from that statistic. They think it means that Covid only killed people who were about to die anyway.
Whereas what it means is that it increases everyone's probability of death proportional to their existing risk of death. I think it was once estimated that catching Covid was equal to a year's worth of all-fatality risk for all age groups.
Indeed. It icnreases the mortality from existing conditions quite a bit, especially if you regard "needing a general anaesthetic" as a medical condition in itself. Vaccines do mitigate that but I'm not sure how completely.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
There was a fucking communist on SAGE who confessed she wanted to reorder society to fit her idiot Marxist theories. Ugh
Never again
They won't find the public so receptive next time.
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
There was a fucking communist on SAGE who confessed she wanted to reorder society to fit her idiot Marxist theories. Ugh
Never again
They won't find the public so receptive next time.
Are you sure? I expected the public to get tired of the nonsense far quicker than they did.
"Rishi Sunak becomes first frontline politician to join The Sunday Times Rich List The chancellor and his wife’s wealth is estimated at £730 million" (£)
Why not last year? How thorough is the Sunday Times' research? And why not Heseltine in the 1980s or was the Rich List not a thing back then? And this lot reckon Jacob Rees-Mogg has £100 million stuffed under his mattress. https://spearswms.com/what-is-jacob-rees-moggs-net-worth/
At a rough guess, 7,500 fewer than biological women do.
This is nuts. Dangerous nuts “increasing inclusivity” for people who are not at risk from the conditions.
In some cases, the new advice looks clearer than the old, although I can't see why the word woman should not be used. We need to avoid quasi-mystical debates about what is a woman. Women (see, I've used that word) who have had a hysterectomy are presumably not any longer at risk of womb cancer; are they not real women?
The Mail's slightly hysterical coverage shows in: "However, in an update sneaked out in January — which campaigners only uncovered this week — both lines were removed."
Sneaked out by being openly published on the web!
And the NHS page on ovarian cancer does go on to say:- Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer. This includes women, trans men, non-binary people and intersex people with ovaries.
(Intersex is the new word for hermaphrodite; I learned that from This is Going to Hurt on BBC2.)
How odd. 'Intersex' has been around for a long time - since 1970s IIRC in biology anyway. (But C19 use could be the equivalent of "between-sex" or heterosexual as in intersexual relations.)
Press starting to ramp up the monkeyspunkypox fear this morning. It's out there!
Yeah, what's going on with that? My understanding is that Monkeypox was a rare mostly tropical virus that didn't spread very easily at all?
Has it mutated to become more transmissible?
Very doubtful. I mean it's 40 odd cases in half a dozen countries which doesn't suggest easy community transmission, no clusters. It seems to spread via sex, close skin contact, touching infected clothing and they've tagged in some vague thing about 'droplets' and extended face to face contact
Is “extended face to face contact” what used to be called making out?
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
The average age people died of Covid-19 was 82. The average age people die in general is 82.
The funny thing is you would have been cancelled for saying this even a year ago. Now of course the two groups aren't like for like because we're talking about life expectancy at circa 80, which is longer.
The problem is that people draw the wrong conclusion from that statistic. They think it means that Covid only killed people who were about to die anyway.
Whereas what it means is that it increases everyone's probability of death proportional to their existing risk of death. I think it was once estimated that catching Covid was equal to a year's worth of all-fatality risk for all age groups.
That sounds right for older groups, but far too high for younger groups, unless it's covering only diseases and the like rather than mental health and accidents.
"Rishi Sunak becomes first frontline politician to join The Sunday Times Rich List The chancellor and his wife’s wealth is estimated at £730 million" (£)
I have only read @Cyclefree comment piece and as so often she is spot on and I agree 100% that we must never again allow our country's law makers to pass such idiotic, even ludicrous, laws on us
Its a shame most posters on this site were in full agreement with the restictions when they were imposed, and most wanted them to go further.
In April 2020 we were locked into our homes for our own safety and the safety of others.
All those on here saying, "well I disagreed with this restrictive socialism from day one" seem to have forgotten that if one was over a certain age in April, May, June, or December 2020 and January, February and early March 2021 and one contracted the virus there was a very good chance it was good night Vienna.
The narrative in part has changed to protect Johnson. "It wasn't so bad in April 2020, which is why Big Dog could party like it was 1999". It really was so bad.
Whether with hindsight it could have been managed better is open to debate. At the time, we didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
Captain Hindsight did. He would have kept us locked up earlier, later, longer, tighter. Christmas 2021 would have been a very shitty affair, left to SKS.
He was of course being guided "by the science". Which was massively pessimistic, once the nation was getting vaxxed.
Not all the science. Many scientists were saying they were worried about omicron given the limited data, not that many calling for action outside of iSage. Some of the modelling was eye-watering, to be sure, but not all (there were also models that said we would be ok). SKS was wrong at the end of 2021 and (I think) I said so at the time. To me, it looked opportunistic (a stick to beat the government with if things did go bad) and lowered my opinion of him. Johnson et al got the response to the Omicron situation about right, perhaps they could have even done less than they did, but they resisted panic at least.
My issue with the modelling is that I believe what was being shown to government was cherry picked by someone (I don't know who) to make them take action. This was done with honest intentions as that person believed action needed to be taken and wouldn't have been if a more realistic set of models had been shown. But it was badly handled.
There was a fucking communist on SAGE who confessed she wanted to reorder society to fit her idiot Marxist theories. Ugh
Comments
I have been involved in at least 2 cases where people had been in custody for the best part of a year and then the trial has collapsed on the first or second day because of either an absence of witnesses or witnesses not speaking up to their statements. As these were High Court cases they involved fairly serious crimes but even so they served significant sentences despite being found not guilty. They get no recompense for that.
So far as I am aware this huge reduction in the right to liberty was barely even discussed. And it is still in force.
I do think the first lockdown was probably justified as we didn't know much about the virus at that point and what was going on in China looked absolutely terrible.
As time went on the repeated lockdown became more and more ridiculous.
Hopefully we'll never repeat this social experiment again... the way both PM and LOTO have ended up facing police investigations, not to mention the economic cost and not this dreadful inflation spike, makes me think it's unlikely a government will ever dare implement a national lockdown again.
Hopefully.
It is very easy to fire people in the US. This is because the Right have strongly resisted employee rights for decades (centuries!). Contrary to darkage's earlier suggestion, I don't think it's a vote winner for the Right to suddenly start supporting stronger employee rights, but only for middle-aged male employees wanting to screw younger women.
I also note that US universities work differently to UK universities. UK universities are a bit more like any other place of employment. Concepts like tenure went decades ago. US universities retain more ancient structures that exacerbate the power dynamics.
I know people in US universities. I know a couple where she's head of the lab and he's employed in the lab. They're about the same age, they've been together for years. I know people who have been involved in inappropriate relationships and not been fired. I know plenty of people in UK universities who deserve to be fired!
Also, there was the nonsense of "a couple can't shop together".
Edit: and one-way systems which made people spend more time in the shop.
Another element that will never become a "stat". There will be plenty of other examples.
Has it mutated to become more transmissible?
The perception given was that we could tweak R, when in reality it was much more complex.
(Possibly the greatest Viz creation of all time, IMHO).
Thank-you for the header, @Cyclefree .
I think you perhaps underplay the ill effect of sensationalist media coverage, and the desire of all and sundry to use Covid as political ammunition. But since we are back into a PB Covid bunfight, I'm off for the morning.
I also agree very much with Applicant and NerysHughes points; the public was firmly in favour of very draconian lockdowns, as seen in polls regularly posted on this site.
The media seemed to be even more so, with Sky News (particularly two journalists who, of course, broke the rules for a party) most notably leading the charge.
So unfortunately this is not an easy-to-fix 'Boris is a fool' problem - opposition politicians, and leadership rivals in his own party were almost to a man in favour of longer lasting or more draconian lockdowns. Sturgeon locked down for longer and was praised for being more humane and compassionate than Westminster.
When Andrew Neil joined the GBNews project (which he has of course since left), he pinpointed as one motivation a specific bias in media: the assumption that, whatever the problem in life, we must ask the government what they are going to do about it, even if such government action may have horrendous side-effects.
I think there's something in that. There was of course a very beneficial government action: the single-mindedness of purpose with which the vaccine was pursued and procured. But when all comes out in the wash, I think the societal and economic effects of the draconian lockdowns were greater than any of the short-term benefits.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2321212-could-monkeypox-become-a-pandemic-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/
I can't help being a little bit wary of the approach some of the news interest might take given the LGB (etc) link with transmission, in some recent UK cases at least (which might just be fortuitous, a statistical blip). I remember AIDS only too well.
At a regular monthly gathering of friends.
Which he comes by Eurostar from France to attend.
Whatever else one thinks about Boris, he's the correct PM to have had. Dave and Blair would also have been tended towards freedom as well. PM Starmer, May and Brown would all have cracked down much harder and we'd have been unlikely to ever see the end of COVID measures once they were handed all that control over people's lives. Scottish people have lucked out that the Westminster government has constantly pushed on removing restrictions, otherwise Sturgeon would still have everything in place.
What I'd like to see now is the dismantling of the final COVID measures, I'd order Ofcom to start looking into the removal of social distancing and plastic screens on TV shows etc... Just bin all of the bullshit from COVID.
One-way systems probably helped, especially if they stopped moving stuff around for fun. Some supermarket aisles are wider than others, which might make a difference. I don't remember reduced opening hours; was that a local thing?
So what we are watching then, for the moment, not the gap or opposition lead, but the Tory share for a trending lower?
I fear a “slippery eel got away with it” slide is sort of thing to be more permanent than short.
I mean, if the winter flu figures were reported each year from Nov to Apr in the same way you'd have people clamouring for lockdown (and I'm not suggesting flu kills as many before anyone jumps on me)
All of those systems were just performative bullshit. I remember when the pretence dropped towards the end and the government's own report suggested that "value" of mask mandates was no more than a reminder to people that COVID was still a problem, the masks themselves had little effect on the infection rate.
I still see some people go to the pub with a mask on then remove it when they sit down. There's going to be people who are scarred for a very long time because of the government messaging and it's on them and the scientists who pushed their zero COVID agenda all over the news and briefed against the government position from within the government's advisory bodies.
I'd like to see Nuremberg style trials for these scientists, or at least a very serious inquiry into how we got a situation where they were simply allowed to brief the media against the agreed government position and remain on these committees.
Any future guidance on pandemics should make clear that unelected people should never be allowed to have their hands on the levers of power again. It's extremely difficult to claw them away. Those few months of rule by technocrat and scientist were some of the most depressing this nation has seen post-war.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10833585/NHS-removes-word-women-ovarian-womb-cancer-advice-pages.html
At a rough guess, 7,500 fewer than biological women do.
This is nuts. Dangerous nuts “increasing inclusivity” for people who are not at risk from the conditions.
So yes locking down the healthy to prevent the deaths of those being comforted until they die is not right or responsible.
Locking down those being comforted until they die so they can't see their loved ones in their final months isn't humane either.
My nan died in a Care Home being denied visitors and not seeing her loved ones in her final months. That was cruel, heartless and is the reality of your supposed "kindness" of lockdown.
Never again.
‘If you have “F*** You Money”, and you don’t say “F*** You”, who’s going to?’ - Joe Rogan.
The pub mask thing still seemed very much in the thinking of spread as via short range droplets, rather than it being truly airbourne. The rules would have made some sense had the former been the case.
I wonder whether this, obliquely, means that actually only an administration of former Remainers can properly deliver Brexit, because it could resolve issues as they are, without having to defend the lies and policy decisions that created them to start with. ~AA @chrisgreybrexit
*in some cases, IIRC, mandated by the government, so they share some blame, too
One-way systems were definitely counter-productive, if you needed something a third of the way down an aisle you had to walk all the way down one aisle and all the way back up the next, clearly adding to time spent in the shop. I'm quite surprised the supermarkets dropped them so soon, they surely benefitted by routing people down aisles they normally wouldn't visit, triggering impulse purchases.
As for opening hours, all our 24-hour and open-till-11am/midnight supermarkets cut back to 8pm IIRC.
(*) In reality, of course, we sometimes queued up two or three people apart, and then met up once we'd got past the jobsworth on the door.
Absolute clowns.
And their results were no better than ours. But far better to subject your people to needless regs to own the Brit govt.
Is it just me or do women seem to be getting "cancelled" even from medical advice relating to potentially life threatening conditions only women can get?
The one exception is the media and their portrayal of “Independent SAGE” - this was deliberately misleading and disingenuous, and those giving them airtime need to be held accountable for that decision.
At the moment we can say definitely no - no trend of Tory slide, share from most recent polls, Comres no change, Redfield show a 2 point Conservative bounce, mori do show drop, but they measure month on month. And as you imply do Yougov consult humans, or a random number generating computer?
Or MOR than less at the moment… 🙂
I also think the media need to take a good, hard look at themselves. Too often questions at news conferences who all about star reporters trying for a 'gotcha' moment, hence nonsense about pasties and scotch eggs etc.
But they won't.
The thread header is very well written but it is naive. There isn't any circumstance that any Government in the UK could have avoided lockdown and the other restrictions. The press would have wound the public up to make the Government complete hate figures for causing the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
I think the Government probably intorduced the least restrictions it could based on the poor scientific advice and the nightmare press that exists in this country. The most sickening being Kay Burley and Beth Rigby.
I was completely ridiculed on this site for even suggesting that maybe lockdowns wrere not effective in May/June 2020 and now with hindsight people have a different view, but to blame the Government for introducing the lock down when 95% of people and just about all "expert scientists" agreed with it is a bit rich.
People have throughout made the BS argument that since the average life expectancy at 80 is 90, that the average death is ten years life lost. But it's utterly wrong, since people who die are not average and otherwise nobody would ever die. The average 80 year old does not live in a Care home, they live in their own home.
For the Care sector in general the median life expectancy is less than twelve months after admission. So locking down for a year or two, just denies most their final months with loved ones.
Death is sad and it hit me hard when my nan died, but death comes to us all and I think it would have been kinder to her if she'd been allowed to see her loved ones in her final months rather than be locked away left to die alone. Even if she'd died sooner, it would still be kinder.
I hate what happened to this country with a passion. It was cruel and unnecessary, unprincipled and wrong. Simply saying "yes but people died" does not make death wrong, or less inevitable, or locking people away from loved ones until they die a kindness.
Max, you've lost it a little* with "Nuremberg style trials for these scientists"! How many scientists do you think will want to contribute to anything government related if that was to happen? I would certainly pull the plug on all my DHSC work ASAP.
*a lot, but I try to be part of the kinder, gentler PB
Edit: The government of course can and should set whatever rules they want on NDAs or similar for advisors and committee members. They have to weigh those up against possibly losing contributors if too strict. But their decision. The scientists should work (or choose not to work with government) based on the rules in place.
On the same Newspoll error as 2019 though it would be ALP 50% Coalition 50%.
Morrison and Albanese tied for preferred PM 42% each
https://twitter.com/TomMcIlroy/status/1527586374609620992?s=20&t=QnjU5nMweDNMHVf7cGzeBg
It’s “men” telling women, how to think, what to feel and what to do.
The situation in some sports is ridiculous, and in particular I worry about young women being railroaded onto a chemical and surgical pathway some may come to regret. The Cass review is a shocker. Lots of ideology, very little evidence.
Wearing face coverings in as many indoor environments as is practicable will help to reduce transmission. There is clear evidence from studies with individuals that face coverings can substantially reduce emission of the virus and can provide some protection to others, and higher quality, better fitting face coverings are more likely to be effective. This is detailed in a paper discussed at SAGE 96; In the current circumstances it may be necessary to reconsider the wearing of face coverings in places where the balance of risks and benefits did not previously support it, for example primary school classrooms, and for vocal activities such as singing. There is evidence that mandating the use of face coverings is likely to increase adherence.
Many face coverings such as scarves, other single-layer fabrics and valved masks, though currently permitted, are likely to be ineffective at reducing transmission. There is significant scope to improve effectiveness through use of higher quality, well-fitting face coverings. Renewed public communications on selection and wearing of effective face coverings is likely to be beneficial. Offering free masks at entry points would likely improve adherence by mitigating cost and improving availability.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emg-and-spi-b-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-npis-in-the-context-of-omicron-15-december-2021/emg-and-spi-b-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-npis-in-the-context-of-omicron-15-december-2021
Explaining my point - the scientists perpetrated a fraud on the UK and must answer for it.
At other end of scale, Lord Frost leader of the ERG and arguably only people who understand Brexit and can speak for Brexit, argue that Brexit was freedom to escape the bureaucratic European social model, but we haven’t taken that step, we are still messily shadowing the European social model and actually not done Brexit, hence our problems.
Nobody has a clue what SKS would have done had he been PM during peak Covid. Could have been better than BJ, could have been worse. I have my own suspicions/speculation, though I don't share the crystal ball certainty of many on here.
He didn't provide any.
He also wanted to prioritise teachers etc ahead of the elderly for vaccines.
Unless you think he was lying when he opposed lifting lockdown and was doing so purely for cynical party political advantage . . .
We'll presumably have Toby Young and co in these Nuremberg style trials, too? Plus that YouTube nurse pushing invermectin and dodgy stats?
I hope you'll spare any of us that may ever have been wrong on PB!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/johnson-variant-keir-starmer-gmb-b1880277.html
However, the polls say it’s so very tight, whoever wins shouldn’t do by much - but as we know, especially this place last time, final results don’t always match polls.
I’m still sticking to my call the government stay in office and I lose my long time bet, my calculation is when a government get as much swing back as we have seen in recent weeks of the campaign, it favours them to defy the final polls.
Nevertheless, you're absolutely right in saying that those entering care homes are not statistically representative of the wider population. Even so, the care homes sector has a very wide range of inhabitants, even in the old folks homes. A friend's mum, for instance, was in one for about 12 years, because she had MS and ultimately died of it, while being bright as a button mentally all the time. That's the opposite of the very real dementia category.
Add to that the legal issues involved and the liability of care home operators.
This is the sort of thing that needs a proper and objective analysis in the future inquiry - and also to be considered in future pandemic planning. If it was not done in past planning, or was ignored, that was a serious omission.
And that's the point of the trials, to establish who said what and which rules were broken by the scientists. How can we know what happened until we ask them under oath.
We will find out tomorrow
It's like fucking McCarthyism: "Are you, or have you ever been, a scientist?"
Trying to explain all this to colleagues overseas ...
The chancellor and his wife’s wealth is estimated at £730 million" (£)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rishi-sunak-becomes-first-frontline-politician-to-join-sunday-times-rich-list-2022-zksx9bprq
Open the zoos.
M8.
Part of the problem is that people can be too precious about death and treat every death as a tragedy, but there are tragedies worse than death.
The media facilitates this. Soft sob stories interviewing "bereaved" families and "blaming" their deaths etc as if the deaths should have been prevented.
The amount of interviews of things like "my 98 year old father/grandfather etc caught COVID in a Care Home and died, he should have been protected". Sorry to be harsh, but death was coming for your 98 year old relative either way, if not now it wasn't much further away - what we should have been doing is allowing them to make the most of whatever precious time they had left, not denying them visitors so they died alone and cut off from loved ones.
The Mail's slightly hysterical coverage shows in:
"However, in an update sneaked out in January — which campaigners only uncovered this week — both lines were removed."
Sneaked out by being openly published on the web!
And the NHS page on ovarian cancer does go on to say:-
Anyone with ovaries can get ovarian cancer. This includes women, trans men, non-binary people and intersex people with ovaries.
You cannot get ovarian cancer if you've had surgery to remove your ovaries.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ovarian-cancer/causes/
(Intersex is the new word for hermaphrodite; I learned that from This is Going to Hurt on BBC2.)
There is a strong element of projection, perhaps even self-hatred, among these right wing "anti elitists". Of course it's all just performative nonsense designed to deflect the pitchfork-wielding mob from their true enemies.
There was a fucking communist on SAGE who confessed she wanted to reorder society to fit her idiot Marxist theories. Ugh
Never again
The ultimate example of this is in Northern Ireland - where the Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries have carved up various illegal businesses. They have worked together with remarkably little friction, on drug dealing, for years.
Whereas what it means is that it increases everyone's probability of death proportional to their existing risk of death. I think it was once estimated that catching Covid was equal to a year's worth of all-fatality risk for all age groups.
Forget partygate and beergate , every day voters are seeing price rises they have never experienced before and are frightened
All we hear from Boris and Rishi is that help is coming at some ill defined later date and to be honest they are so utterly out of touch they have gifted the narrative to labour
Rishi appearing on the rich list just compounds opinion, though I do not think his wife's' wealth should be relevant
In years to come the last few months, Ukraine excepted, will be an example by those teaching politics how to do a right royal 'Ratner' on your brand
https://spearswms.com/what-is-jacob-rees-moggs-net-worth/
Like Rishi another very rich Tory Cabinet Minister and leadership contender tipped for No 10 who fell just short
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7636421/Michael-Heseltines-previous-property-sale-28million.html