"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
I generally don’t bother trying to explain science reporting in newspapers. It can bear little resemblance to actual science.
If you want to read the science, some more useful papers here include:
So according to the introduction of your first link there were 28.1 million excess years of life lost to the pandemic across 31 countries.
Locking down 67 million for five months is 28 million years of life and liberty lost to lockdown and we had more than five months of lockdown across two years of restrictions.
So lockdown in the UK alone caused more loss of life to be lived than the pandemic did across the 31 nations studied.
Lockdown was an unmitigated failure.
1 - That was the loss of life WITH lockdowns. Had it been allowed to spread freely prior to vaccines, obviously the loss of life would have been way way higher
2 - Life in lockdown wasn't equivalent to death.
1 - But the life lost to lockdown would have been massively more lower.
2 - You're right. Life lost to lockdown is worse than death.
Even if we ignore the judgement that life lost to lockdown is worse than life lost to death, and even if we accept the absurd 10 years lost hypothesis, the only justification for a year of lockdown for 67 million people would be if it averted 6.7 million excess deaths. Otherwise lockdown costs more life than death does.
"Life in lockdown is worse than death."
Really?
I don't think there's much point in us discussing it further. I hated lockdown with a passion (for reasons I've explained earlier), but there was much we did that was far better than lying there slowly decomposing.
Even discussing on here is something that can't be done when dead. Going for walks with your family (always allowed) was better than being dead.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Yep, Covid deaths are mostly not relevant to neonate deaths etc, plus all the young people having accidents, youngish cancers etc which will of course drag down the non-Covid average age of death and indeed life-expectancy at birth.
But people (many people) seem to struggle with that logic, so I put it a different way.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Incidentally, part of his MO was to make it look like they were nearer to death than they really were in the weeks, months beforehand.
On topic: if you were stupid enough to obey the rules you deserve everything you got.
I observed the rules. What did I deserve? Covid? Well I was hoping to avoid that and avoid putting others at risk because the truth was at that time no-one knew jack-shit about how risky everything was.
Please accept the award for Most Stupid Fucking Comment of the Day.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The 'science' (not the nasty African science, the real Western obviously true science) sold the government an absolute pup. And the flight bans were just out and out actual, real world racism. Stop dangerous brown people even if there is no outbreak there. It was disgusting. And the vitriol against people looking at the hospital and death data in SA and saying 'hang on....' was just ugh That was the absolute last straw for me. 2 years of bullshit, lies and figure driven fear/control. No Strictly for you Van Tam, Whitty and Vallance
My favourite statement was that South Africans were a different type of human to us so Omicron may affect people in the UK differently.
Yes. They have ummmm different infection exposure patterns and ummmm age differences and ummmmm brown people. Pitiful. The racism was on full display
Err, no. Ethnicity and lifestyle are major factors in patterns of disease.
If anything is racist, it is the disease itself...
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
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?
Gobbing in each other's mouths I think.
One of the strippers in the famous "Mighty Fine" pub in Pompey would do that to you for a tenner. It was a test of manhood for many a young jack. It was very weird because she used to work the weekend day shift and all this would be going on while there were punters eating their Sunday dinner at the next table.
The sins of the flesh at a bargain price, Sodom reborn.
I don't think there is anywhere in the UK that really plumbs the depths of depravity.
I did a run ashore in Lisbon on the way back from the Falklands. There was a strip club there (can't remember the name. Pink something...) where the talent would take you out the back and give you the full Elon (no purchase of a horse required) while leaning against a stack of Sagres crates. If one left it too late for the trip to the crates the tiled floor would be so slippy underfoot from the issue of previous punters it was actually hard to stay upright. That's depravity.
There used to be a bloke who was a regular in the boozer where I worked as a callow youth (dead now, overweight, big drinker, heavy smoker, massive heart attack) who offhandedly told me, as if it were quite commonplace, that when he was a young squaddie in Germany he would frequent the local brothels with his mates.
Once they’d all enjoyed the company of the ladies this guy I knew claimed he would go around the hookers in turn cleaning his fellow squaddies, erm, deposits from their nether regions with his tongue.
I’ve never forgotten how he sat there, fag in hand with a pint of John Smiths, telling me about this decidedly niche activity as if we were discussing the weather.
We used to have a top thriller writer and brothel historian on pb who, iirc, claimed this used to be a thing in 19th Century Paris, or something along those lines.
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
I seem to recall you were fully supportive of the restrictions at the time Big_G.
I generally agree with @Cyclefree on most of her headers but "Never Again" is too simplistic here.
For me the issue is not the principle but the practical application. Dependent on the virulence of any future pandemic I would support severe restrictions. However, we should learn from Covid and set up legislation now that can be quickly switched on, by agreement of Parliament, when required.
We need to recognise that there will be another pandemic at some point and it could well be more severe than Covid.
We already have such legislation. The Civil Contingencies Act. It was not used. I have explained why elsewhere.
The next thing may or may not be a pandemic, but I keep wondering how we can still be here.
The risk register for the CCA 2004 needs, I imagine, to include these:
War and invasion Nuclear attack Mass famine Pandemic causing mass extinctions across species including ours Runaway warming/climate change and allied dangers New ice age A Permian style event - earthbound natural disaster A dinosaur extinction style event - a solar system disaster Digital and electronic wipeout - could be a solar disaster, other sources are available Extra terrestrials - a beyond solar system event A passing black hole style event - a multi galactic event Instantaneous change in the laws of nature - a universe event And of course unknown unknowns.
iSage caused serious issues for my place as staff would be quoting their advice/comments as SAGE advise and then wouldn't back down.
But I also think that the group should have the right to exist, communicate etc and the principle behind their existence is completely sound.
I have no issue with them existing but I take enormous issue with the name Independent SAGE. Exceptionally (and deliberately) misleading. On more than one occasion journalists confused the two and credited some chancer with being an actual government advisor, usually without correction.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
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.
It's worse than that. There is a fair amount of evidence about the physical harm caused by many of the drugs used, many of which were created for very different purposes and which have not been properly tested for the purpose for which they are now being used.
Worth noting the financial donations being given by one of the manufacturers involved to the Lib Dems.
The final outcome of the Dr Webberley case will also be interesting. He has been found to have given out some of these drugs on the basis of very limited / inadequate diagnoses without proper informed consent.
It is only a matter of time before we start getting lawsuits against doctors / hospitals and insurers, especially in the US, start asking some serious questions.
The fact is, the Greens have a paramilitary wing going around at night torching peoples beloved cars in residential areas, they, the greens not the cars, should be going down, not up. We shouldn’t even be allowed to hear Green spokespeople speak on television, they should be voiced by actors.
By "torching people's cars" I assume you mean letting the tyres down on SUVs in cities.
By "Green" I assume you mean an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion.
A vote for green councillor is endorsement for all the direct action the green movement does the Green Party doesn’t call out. It’s also vote for politicians who would bankrupt country, town or city instantly if they gained power.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
I generally don’t bother trying to explain science reporting in newspapers. It can bear little resemblance to actual science.
If you want to read the science, some more useful papers here include:
So according to the introduction of your first link there were 28.1 million excess years of life lost to the pandemic across 31 countries.
Locking down 67 million for five months is 28 million years of life and liberty lost to lockdown and we had more than five months of lockdown across two years of restrictions.
So lockdown in the UK alone caused more loss of life to be lived than the pandemic did across the 31 nations studied.
Lockdown was an unmitigated failure.
1 - That was the loss of life WITH lockdowns. Had it been allowed to spread freely prior to vaccines, obviously the loss of life would have been way way higher
2 - Life in lockdown wasn't equivalent to death.
1 - But the life lost to lockdown would have been massively more lower.
2 - You're right. Life lost to lockdown is worse than death.
Even if we ignore the judgement that life lost to lockdown is worse than life lost to death, and even if we accept the absurd 10 years lost hypothesis, the only justification for a year of lockdown for 67 million people would be if it averted 6.7 million excess deaths. Otherwise lockdown costs more life than death does.
"Life in lockdown is worse than death."
Really?
I don't think there's much point in us discussing it further. I hated lockdown with a passion (for reasons I've explained earlier), but there was much we did that was far better than lying there slowly decomposing.
Even discussing on here is something that can't be done when dead. Going for walks with your family (always allowed) was better than being dead.
Yes, really.
Going for walks with family in a care home was not always allowed actually, so you might want to get your facts straight. My nan while being kept imprisoned in a home that wouldn't let her out, and wouldn't allow visitors was not able to just go walking with loved ones. Quite the opposite, it was forbidden even if she could have still walked anymore.
Telling old people who are in a care home and are dying soon anyway that they can not have visitors, that their loved ones can't hold their hands while they die, that they can't see their great grandchildren, that they can't feel the love of visitors in their final months ... That they have to stay locked up, locked away from visitors, unable to go out, but unable to have people come to them ... That is a cruel and unusual punishment that is a fate worse than death.
It is a cruel and unusual punishment we wouldn't inflict upon convicted murderers.
That's just for the old and dying and without even getting into a value judgement of whether a young person's education may be worth more than a frail old person being kept alive for another day where they are forbidden from seeing visitors, without loved ones, without affection being even allowed.
On topic: if you were stupid enough to obey the rules you deserve everything you got.
I observed the rules. What did I deserve? Covid? Well I was hoping to avoid that and avoid putting others at risk because the truth was at that time no-one knew jack-shit about how risky everything was.
Please accept the award for Most Stupid Fucking Comment of the Day.
Dura_Ace shouldn't be too concerned - I haven't posted much today, and I expect to wrest the award off him soon...
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The 'science' (not the nasty African science, the real Western obviously true science) sold the government an absolute pup. And the flight bans were just out and out actual, real world racism. Stop dangerous brown people even if there is no outbreak there. It was disgusting. And the vitriol against people looking at the hospital and death data in SA and saying 'hang on....' was just ugh That was the absolute last straw for me. 2 years of bullshit, lies and figure driven fear/control. No Strictly for you Van Tam, Whitty and Vallance
My favourite statement was that South Africans were a different type of human to us so Omicron may affect people in the UK differently.
Yes. They have ummmm different infection exposure patterns and ummmm age differences and ummmmm brown people. Pitiful. The racism was on full display
Err, no. Ethnicity and lifestyle are major factors in patterns of disease.
If anything is racist, it is the disease itself...
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
Patterns of disease in one country cannot be extrapolated directly to another.
As I have pointed out, Omicron was only identified in late November. Certainty over mortality takes several weeks to know, hence quarantine measures on flights in the meantime are prudent.
If one follows anecdotal evidence then the first officially recorded covid death was 11 Jan 2020, 12 days after the new disease was first notified to the WHO. Should we have concluded in that first week of Jan that it was not dangerous?
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the 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
I seem to recall you were fully supportive of the restrictions at the time Big_G.
I generally agree with @Cyclefree on most of her headers but "Never Again" is too simplistic here.
For me the issue is not the principle but the practical application. Dependent on the virulence of any future pandemic I would support severe restrictions. However, we should learn from Covid and set up legislation now that can be quickly switched on, by agreement of Parliament, when required.
We need to recognise that there will be another pandemic at some point and it could well be more severe than Covid.
We already have such legislation. The Civil Contingencies Act. It was not used. I have explained why elsewhere.
The next thing may or may not be a pandemic, but I keep wondering how we can still be here.
The risk register for the CCA 2004 needs, I imagine, to include these:
War and invasion Nuclear attack Mass famine Pandemic causing mass extinctions across species including ours Runaway warming/climate change and allied dangers New ice age A Permian style event - earthbound natural disaster A dinosaur extinction style event - a solar system disaster Digital and electronic wipeout - could be a solar disaster, other sources are available Extra terrestrials - a beyond solar system event A passing black hole style event - a multi galactic event Instantaneous change in the laws of nature - a universe event And of course unknown unknowns.
On topic: if you were stupid enough to obey the rules you deserve everything you got.
There is also that but it was bizarre to be on a road trip and having to think of successive reasons why you were out in your car in case you were stopped*. Just going to THAT place for a walk....just going to THAT place for a walk.
*and writing that sentence for me sums up all that was wrong with lockdown - out driving in your car wondering if you would be stopped by the police for doing so.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The 'science' (not the nasty African science, the real Western obviously true science) sold the government an absolute pup. And the flight bans were just out and out actual, real world racism. Stop dangerous brown people even if there is no outbreak there. It was disgusting. And the vitriol against people looking at the hospital and death data in SA and saying 'hang on....' was just ugh That was the absolute last straw for me. 2 years of bullshit, lies and figure driven fear/control. No Strictly for you Van Tam, Whitty and Vallance
My favourite statement was that South Africans were a different type of human to us so Omicron may affect people in the UK differently.
Yes. They have ummmm different infection exposure patterns and ummmm age differences and ummmmm brown people. Pitiful. The racism was on full display
Err, no. Ethnicity and lifestyle are major factors in patterns of disease.
If anything is racist, it is the disease itself...
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
Genuine question - do you have a link to a study from SA comparing Omicron to Delta on spread and hospitalisation, mortality? Clinicians reporting that everyone in their ward with Omicron is getting it mildly is not evidence, it's anecote. Properly assessed, with consideration of demographic factors and of the statistical uncertainty, it becomes evidence.
As I remember it, there was evidence on spread of Omicron, with uncertainties (I remember seeing a chart with confidence intervals, from some official source in SA). It was worse than Delta in that sense. I don't remember seeing any scientific evidence on mortality (certainly) and hospitalisation (probably) at the point at which we were making decisions here. I also seem to recall that the initial Omicron surge was mostly among younger people in a small geographical area, which makes it hard to infer anything. There was, I think, a lack of evidence on what Omicron was like, compared to Delta, in older people in SA. That's important because bad outcomes in young people are rare with both variants, so you need a lot of data to start getting any kind of precision in estimates.
I may be wrong on this, show me a good study published* before** we made the criticised decisions and I'll change my mind.
*As in public, from some kind of reputable source - government, university etc. Doesn't have to have been peer reviewed or in a journal, that takes time **Given it needed time to be digested, assessed and fed into government guidance, we probably need at least a few days, maybe a week before.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
No. See post above.
I have to say my perception was that there were indications from SA that Omicron was going to be generally milder, but that the authorities in the UK did not want to (a) give them credence without more information (b) allow a narrative to develop about it being milder. This goes back to the modelling question. I think it was done for the right reasons, but it was to an extent a misrepresentation of the information emerging from SA.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The 'science' (not the nasty African science, the real Western obviously true science) sold the government an absolute pup. And the flight bans were just out and out actual, real world racism. Stop dangerous brown people even if there is no outbreak there. It was disgusting. And the vitriol against people looking at the hospital and death data in SA and saying 'hang on....' was just ugh That was the absolute last straw for me. 2 years of bullshit, lies and figure driven fear/control. No Strictly for you Van Tam, Whitty and Vallance
My favourite statement was that South Africans were a different type of human to us so Omicron may affect people in the UK differently.
Yes. They have ummmm different infection exposure patterns and ummmm age differences and ummmmm brown people. Pitiful. The racism was on full display
Err, no. Ethnicity and lifestyle are major factors in patterns of disease.
If anything is racist, it is the disease itself...
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
Genuine question - do you have a link to a study from SA comparing Omicron to Delta on spread and hospitalisation, mortality? Clinicians reporting that everyone in their ward with Omicron is getting it mildly is not evidence, it's anecote. Properly assessed, with consideration of demographic factors and of the statistical uncertainty, it becomes evidence.
As I remember it, there was evidence on spread of Omicron, with uncertainties (I remember seeing a chart with confidence intervals, from some official source in SA). It was worse than Delta in that sense. I don't remember seeing any scientific evidence on mortality (certainly) and hospitalisation (probably) at the point at which we were making decisions here. I also seem to recall that the initial Omicron surge was mostly among younger people in a small geographical area, which makes it hard to infer anything. There was, I think, a lack of evidence on what Omicron was like, compared to Delta, in older people in SA. That's important because bad outcomes in young people are rare with both variants, so you need a lot of data to start getting any kind of precision in estimates.
I may be wrong on this, show me a good study published* before** we made the criticised decisions and I'll change my mind.
*As in public, from some kind of reputable source - government, university etc. Doesn't have to have been peer reviewed or in a journal, that takes time **Given it needed time to be digested, assessed and fed into government guidance, we probably need at least a few days, maybe a week before.
Timelines were too short, so yes we were going on anecdote alone. But the characterisation put out by the govenmnent/Chris Whitty was too strong on the 'everything we know is bad'. We didn't actually know that much. And we also had a lot of anecdote about the patients not being as sick.
All data is ultimately a collection of anecdote. Some data is better than others. In this case the SA doctors had seen a clear clinical presentation difference and reported it.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The 'science' (not the nasty African science, the real Western obviously true science) sold the government an absolute pup. And the flight bans were just out and out actual, real world racism. Stop dangerous brown people even if there is no outbreak there. It was disgusting. And the vitriol against people looking at the hospital and death data in SA and saying 'hang on....' was just ugh That was the absolute last straw for me. 2 years of bullshit, lies and figure driven fear/control. No Strictly for you Van Tam, Whitty and Vallance
My favourite statement was that South Africans were a different type of human to us so Omicron may affect people in the UK differently.
Yes. They have ummmm different infection exposure patterns and ummmm age differences and ummmmm brown people. Pitiful. The racism was on full display
Err, no. Ethnicity and lifestyle are major factors in patterns of disease.
If anything is racist, it is the disease itself...
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
Genuine question - do you have a link to a study from SA comparing Omicron to Delta on spread and hospitalisation, mortality? Clinicians reporting that everyone in their ward with Omicron is getting it mildly is not evidence, it's anecote. Properly assessed, with consideration of demographic factors and of the statistical uncertainty, it becomes evidence.
As I remember it, there was evidence on spread of Omicron, with uncertainties (I remember seeing a chart with confidence intervals, from some official source in SA). It was worse than Delta in that sense. I don't remember seeing any scientific evidence on mortality (certainly) and hospitalisation (probably) at the point at which we were making decisions here. I also seem to recall that the initial Omicron surge was mostly among younger people in a small geographical area, which makes it hard to infer anything. There was, I think, a lack of evidence on what Omicron was like, compared to Delta, in older people in SA. That's important because bad outcomes in young people are rare with both variants, so you need a lot of data to start getting any kind of precision in estimates.
I may be wrong on this, show me a good study published* before** we made the criticised decisions and I'll change my mind.
*As in public, from some kind of reputable source - government, university etc. Doesn't have to have been peer reviewed or in a journal, that takes time **Given it needed time to be digested, assessed and fed into government guidance, we probably need at least a few days, maybe a week before.
It would take me a while to find it, but there was an online conference among SA docs at the time that showed the data and made the comparison. Anyone could watch the conference and I remember thinking: are our lot ignoring this?
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
No. See post above.
I have to say my perception was that there were indications from SA that Omicron was going to be generally milder, but that the authorities in the UK did not want to (a) give them credence without more information (b) allow a narrative to develop about it being milder. This goes back to the modelling question. I think it was done for the right reasons, but it was to an extent a misrepresentation of the information emerging from SA.
Yep, I think that's pretty fair. People involved in this that I spoke to at the time were privately optimistic, but very clear that - given we were going to have a lot of cases in a short time and if it did turn out bad then it would be very bad due to the number of cases - that it was important to say that we didn't know it was milder. We didn't. We hoped. The views on the ground were that it was milder. They were right, but they could have been wrong. You only need to look at early news from other diseases (and indeed some of the early ward studies on Covid) to see that observations from small, non-representative samples can be misleading.
I think you'll find the government scientist quotes about mildness were of 'not knowing that' or 'no evidence' not saying that it was not less mild. The distinction may well have been lost on some of the public.
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
I seem to recall you were fully supportive of the restrictions at the time Big_G.
I generally agree with @Cyclefree on most of her headers but "Never Again" is too simplistic here.
For me the issue is not the principle but the practical application. Dependent on the virulence of any future pandemic I would support severe restrictions. However, we should learn from Covid and set up legislation now that can be quickly switched on, by agreement of Parliament, when required.
We need to recognise that there will be another pandemic at some point and it could well be more severe than Covid.
We already have such legislation. The Civil Contingencies Act. It was not used. I have explained why elsewhere.
The next thing may or may not be a pandemic, but I keep wondering how we can still be here.
The risk register for the CCA 2004 needs, I imagine, to include these:
War and invasion Nuclear attack Mass famine Pandemic causing mass extinctions across species including ours Runaway warming/climate change and allied dangers New ice age A Permian style event - earthbound natural disaster A dinosaur extinction style event - a solar system disaster Digital and electronic wipeout - could be a solar disaster, other sources are available Extra terrestrials - a beyond solar system event A passing black hole style event - a multi galactic event Instantaneous change in the laws of nature - a universe event And of course unknown unknowns.
The fact is, the Greens have a paramilitary wing going around at night torching peoples beloved cars in residential areas, they, the greens not the cars, should be going down, not up. We shouldn’t even be allowed to hear Green spokespeople speak on television, they should be voiced by actors.
I am the only member of the Greens who owns a Unimog. True fact.
The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust have one - they were using it to transport lazy people to Spurn Point ( / Island).
Whether they could be regarded as Green is another matter...
I think they've mostly stopped using it as it was eroding the very dunes they were trying to protect, although it was still parked up last time I was there.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
No. See post above.
I have to say my perception was that there were indications from SA that Omicron was going to be generally milder, but that the authorities in the UK did not want to (a) give them credence without more information (b) allow a narrative to develop about it being milder. This goes back to the modelling question. I think it was done for the right reasons, but it was to an extent a misrepresentation of the information emerging from SA.
Yep, I think that's pretty fair. People involved in this that I spoke to at the time were privately optimistic, but very clear that - given we were going to have a lot of cases in a short time and if it did turn out bad then it would be very bad due to the number of cases - that it was important to say that we didn't know it was milder. We didn't. We hoped. The views on the ground were that it was milder. They were right, but they could have been wrong. You only need to look at early news from other diseases (and indeed some of the early ward studies on Covid) to see that observations from small, non-representative samples can be misleading.
I think you'll find the government scientist quotes about mildness were of 'not knowing that' or 'no evidence' not saying that it was not less mild. The distinction may well have been lost on some of the public.
But there was evidence that it was milder – and that evidence had been provided to them at the time.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
It may have been worse, but improbable that it would last years of disruption if it had been allowed to burnout freely while healthy children continued to be educated.
Every single day of liberty you steal from people, whether it be the old or the young, those in education or those who want to see their loved ones while they still can, and everything in between, is a day of liberty, a day of living life freely you have stolen from people.
On any measurable metric, it is transparent lockdown cost more life and liberty than the pandemic did and ever could have.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I'm old enough to remember when posters mocked Captain Hindsight.
The level of hindsight, indeed rewriting history, on here today far exceeds anything SKS managed.
Did or did not SKS a) support the government in every lockdown vote; and, crucially, b) advocate for more and longer lockdowns.
No one is rewriting history we are looking at what happened and making a reasonable assumption both of SKS' honesty and his intention.
There is a case to be made that earlier and stricter lockdowns are shorter and more effective than late and looser.
Arguably China, Korea Taiwan, Vietnam were very effective in their first wave measures (not all of which could be described as lockdown) though these measures are now overwhelmed by Omicron. Measures may need to be tailored to the particular bug, and that may be difficult in an emerging and evolving situation.
Note, you won't see posts of mine arguing for lockdowns over the last few years, though I understood why others were arguing for them.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
No. See post above.
I have to say my perception was that there were indications from SA that Omicron was going to be generally milder, but that the authorities in the UK did not want to (a) give them credence without more information (b) allow a narrative to develop about it being milder. This goes back to the modelling question. I think it was done for the right reasons, but it was to an extent a misrepresentation of the information emerging from SA.
Yep, I think that's pretty fair. People involved in this that I spoke to at the time were privately optimistic, but very clear that - given we were going to have a lot of cases in a short time and if it did turn out bad then it would be very bad due to the number of cases - that it was important to say that we didn't know it was milder. We didn't. We hoped. The views on the ground were that it was milder. They were right, but they could have been wrong. You only need to look at early news from other diseases (and indeed some of the early ward studies on Covid) to see that observations from small, non-representative samples can be misleading.
I think you'll find the government scientist quotes about mildness were of 'not knowing that' or 'no evidence' not saying that it was not less mild. The distinction may well have been lost on some of the public.
Quite - Joe/Jane Public hears 'no evidence of that' and thinks 'isn't'. As ever its scientists talking to the public. Scientists talk in a language that we all understand and often the public doesn't.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The 'science' (not the nasty African science, the real Western obviously true science) sold the government an absolute pup. And the flight bans were just out and out actual, real world racism. Stop dangerous brown people even if there is no outbreak there. It was disgusting. And the vitriol against people looking at the hospital and death data in SA and saying 'hang on....' was just ugh That was the absolute last straw for me. 2 years of bullshit, lies and figure driven fear/control. No Strictly for you Van Tam, Whitty and Vallance
My favourite statement was that South Africans were a different type of human to us so Omicron may affect people in the UK differently.
Yes. They have ummmm different infection exposure patterns and ummmm age differences and ummmmm brown people. Pitiful. The racism was on full display
Err, no. Ethnicity and lifestyle are major factors in patterns of disease.
If anything is racist, it is the disease itself...
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
Genuine question - do you have a link to a study from SA comparing Omicron to Delta on spread and hospitalisation, mortality? Clinicians reporting that everyone in their ward with Omicron is getting it mildly is not evidence, it's anecote. Properly assessed, with consideration of demographic factors and of the statistical uncertainty, it becomes evidence.
As I remember it, there was evidence on spread of Omicron, with uncertainties (I remember seeing a chart with confidence intervals, from some official source in SA). It was worse than Delta in that sense. I don't remember seeing any scientific evidence on mortality (certainly) and hospitalisation (probably) at the point at which we were making decisions here. I also seem to recall that the initial Omicron surge was mostly among younger people in a small geographical area, which makes it hard to infer anything. There was, I think, a lack of evidence on what Omicron was like, compared to Delta, in older people in SA. That's important because bad outcomes in young people are rare with both variants, so you need a lot of data to start getting any kind of precision in estimates.
I may be wrong on this, show me a good study published* before** we made the criticised decisions and I'll change my mind.
*As in public, from some kind of reputable source - government, university etc. Doesn't have to have been peer reviewed or in a journal, that takes time **Given it needed time to be digested, assessed and fed into government guidance, we probably need at least a few days, maybe a week before.
It would take me a while to find it, but there was an online conference among SA docs at the time that showed the data and made the comparison. Anyone could watch the conference and I remember thinking: are our lot ignoring this?
Only about 30% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves. Average hospital stays for COVID-19 have been shorter this time -- about 2.8 days compared to eight days. Just 3% of patients hospitalized recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20% in the country’s earlier outbreaks. “At the moment, virtually everything points toward it being milder disease,” Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute, said, citing the national institute’s figures and other reports. “It’s early days, and we need to get the final data.
Often hospitalizations and deaths happen later, and we are only two weeks into this wave.”
Article dated 11 December. Plan B introduced here 8 December, three days earlier and the quoted person is notably quite cautious, even at that point (may be it was said before 11 December, not clear).
Edit: sorry, plan B announced 8 December. Started to be introduced from 10 December.
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
No. See post above.
I have to say my perception was that there were indications from SA that Omicron was going to be generally milder, but that the authorities in the UK did not want to (a) give them credence without more information (b) allow a narrative to develop about it being milder. This goes back to the modelling question. I think it was done for the right reasons, but it was to an extent a misrepresentation of the information emerging from SA.
Yep, I think that's pretty fair. People involved in this that I spoke to at the time were privately optimistic, but very clear that - given we were going to have a lot of cases in a short time and if it did turn out bad then it would be very bad due to the number of cases - that it was important to say that we didn't know it was milder. We didn't. We hoped. The views on the ground were that it was milder. They were right, but they could have been wrong. You only need to look at early news from other diseases (and indeed some of the early ward studies on Covid) to see that observations from small, non-representative samples can be misleading.
I think you'll find the government scientist quotes about mildness were of 'not knowing that' or 'no evidence' not saying that it was not less mild. The distinction may well have been lost on some of the public.
But there was evidence that it was milder – and that evidence had been provided to them at the time.
Not evidence - anecdote. Evidence in this case would me a proper study on patients and outcomes.
That there was no time for this to have been done is true but also irrelevant. If pressed at the inquiry Whitty will say exactly this.
Interesting to see both the Mail and the Express's take on PartyGate today. The inference is very much that the real scandal is that our betters had to suffer the indignity of an investigation to begin with.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
The fact is, the Greens have a paramilitary wing going around at night torching peoples beloved cars in residential areas, they, the greens not the cars, should be going down, not up. We shouldn’t even be allowed to hear Green spokespeople speak on television, they should be voiced by actors.
I am the only member of the Greens who owns a Unimog. True fact.
You can convert it to run on biomethane gas to transport canvassers to the next destination
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Lockdown was 60 million different experiences though. I'm married with no kids, but with some pets, including a dog who loves a walk. I live on the edge of a forest with fields and Salisbury plain all around. I have a decent house and a garden.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
Interesting to see both the Mail and the Express's take on PartyGate today. The inference is very much that the real scandal is that our betters had to suffer the indignity of an investigation to begin with.
Well that's b******s.
Investigation? They only investigated Boris Johnson at two out of his 5 attended "events". And Simon Case? Who's Simon Case?
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Lockdown was 60 million different experiences though. I'm married with no kids, but with some pets, including a dog who loves a walk. I live on the edge of a forest with fields and Salisbury plain all around. I have a decent house and a garden.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
I was living in my own in a small flat during lockdown. I had a near complete nervous breakdown in the end, prescribed diazepam amongst other things, which did very little, ended up punching holes in the wall and breaking all my furniture in desperation. Signed off sick from work, eventually left my job to work part time to recover, still suffer from anxiety and on medication now.
As you say, lockdown was 60 million different experiences. Mine was extremely bad, and I have no doubt that lockdown damaged my health far more than catching covid at my age and with my BMI/level of physical fitness ever would.
Interesting to see both the Mail and the Express's take on PartyGate today. The inference is very much that the real scandal is that our betters had to suffer the indignity of an investigation to begin with.
Boris' 10 point plan.
i) Do something or other wrong that you made the blimmin rules for. ii) Deny it. iii) Deny it again iv) Set up an inquiry v) Let a reasonably pliant met set up an investigation. vi) Let time pass, hope other stuff comes up. vii) Police come up with conclusions - Pay fine. Say you weren't aware you broke the rules. viii) Say the fine's been paid the matter's dealt with & bemoan the investigation that was required because of the lack of honesty in the first place - and we should focus on the other stuff. ix) Original investigation reports. x) Say it was all ages ago and we're getting on with the stuff in vi).
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Lockdown was 60 million different experiences though. I'm married with no kids, but with some pets, including a dog who loves a walk. I live on the edge of a forest with fields and Salisbury plain all around. I have a decent house and a garden.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
I was living in my own in a small flat during lockdown. I had a near complete nervous breakdown in the end, prescribed diazepam amongst other things, which did very little, ended up punching holes in the wall and breaking all my furniture in desperation. Signed off sick from work, eventually left my job to work part time to recover, still suffer from anxiety and on medication now.
As you say, lockdown was 60 million different experiences. Mine was extremely bad, and I have no doubt that lockdown damaged my health far more than catching covid at my age and with my BMI/level of physical fitness ever would.
Meanwhile, some quite enjoyed the experience, working from home and giving them a feeling of solidarity and community spirit! Isn't that wonderful for them.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
The fact is, the Greens have a paramilitary wing going around at night torching peoples beloved cars in residential areas, they, the greens not the cars, should be going down, not up. We shouldn’t even be allowed to hear Green spokespeople speak on television, they should be voiced by actors.
I am the only member of the Greens who owns a Unimog. True fact.
The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust have one - they were using it to transport lazy people to Spurn Point ( / Island).
Whether they could be regarded as Green is another matter...
I think they've mostly stopped using it as it was eroding the very dunes they were trying to protect, although it was still parked up last time I was there.
Interesting to see both the Mail and the Express's take on PartyGate today. The inference is very much that the real scandal is that our betters had to suffer the indignity of an investigation to begin with.
In just one day it’s morphed into the Them and Us argument that was always bubbling under. I’m surprised people can’t see this change and how it plays out - how the Mail and Express are so stupid for not thinking through what they are doing
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
You had a garden.
This was also a (non-rewritten) recurrent theme on PB. I don't know what all the fuss is about with these lockdowns I simply get up from my study and go for a walk around the paddocks perhaps through the orchard and come back refreshed.
Old well-off white blokes living in large houses with land can't see what the problem is.
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?
Gobbing in each other's mouths I think.
One of the strippers in the famous "Mighty Fine" pub in Pompey would do that to you for a tenner. It was a test of manhood for many a young jack. It was very weird because she used to work the weekend day shift and all this would be going on while there were punters eating their Sunday dinner at the next table.
The sins of the flesh at a bargain price, Sodom reborn.
I don't think there is anywhere in the UK that really plumbs the depths of depravity.
I did a run ashore in Lisbon on the way back from the Falklands. There was a strip club there (can't remember the name. Pink something...) where the talent would take you out the back and give you the full Elon (no purchase of a horse required) while leaning against a stack of Sagres crates. If one left it too late for the trip to the crates the tiled floor would be so slippy underfoot from the issue of previous punters it was actually hard to stay upright. That's depravity.
There used to be a bloke who was a regular in the boozer where I worked as a callow youth (dead now, overweight, big drinker, heavy smoker, massive heart attack) who offhandedly told me, as if it were quite commonplace, that when he was a young squaddie in Germany he would frequent the local brothels with his mates.
Once they’d all enjoyed the company of the ladies this guy I knew claimed he would go around the hookers in turn cleaning his fellow squaddies, erm, deposits from their nether regions with his tongue.
I’ve never forgotten how he sat there, fag in hand with a pint of John Smiths, telling me about this decidedly niche activity as if we were discussing the weather.
Back in 2008, Sean T ruined Hilary Clinton's chances by accusing her of something similar.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Liberty is about making your own choices, not having others make their choices for you.
You may have found pleasure in gardening. Children being denied the right to see their friends, to go to school, to get an education may not have.
The infirm being denied the right to see their loved ones, to be able to leave their own home, to have visitors, to have an opportunity to know their great grandchildren and for their great grandchildren to have an opportunity to know them before it's too late may not have.
You may have an I'm Alright Jack attitude to being denied your freedom but others aren't and the only fair way is to compare one quantity of days with the other.
On a qualitative basis comparing whether the quality of losing your education while young is better or worse than losing your life at the end of it is a value judgement and not quantifiable.
Comparing whether the quality of losing life surrounded by loved ones at the end of a life well lived, or alone, imprisoned in your own home, dying without being legally allowed to see family in your final months is another value judgement and not quantifiable.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Lockdown was 60 million different experiences though. I'm married with no kids, but with some pets, including a dog who loves a walk. I live on the edge of a forest with fields and Salisbury plain all around. I have a decent house and a garden.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
I was living in my own in a small flat during lockdown. I had a near complete nervous breakdown in the end, prescribed diazepam amongst other things, which did very little, ended up punching holes in the wall and breaking all my furniture in desperation. Signed off sick from work, eventually left my job to work part time to recover, still suffer from anxiety and on medication now.
As you say, lockdown was 60 million different experiences. Mine was extremely bad, and I have no doubt that lockdown damaged my health far more than catching covid at my age and with my BMI/level of physical fitness ever would.
On topic: if you were stupid enough to obey the rules you deserve everything you got.
I observed the rules. What did I deserve? Covid? Well I was hoping to avoid that and avoid putting others at risk because the truth was at that time no-one knew jack-shit about how risky everything was.
Please accept the award for Most Stupid Fucking Comment of the Day.
Dura_Ace shouldn't be too concerned - I haven't posted much today, and I expect to wrest the award off him soon...
The Awards Committee look forward to your submissions.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
Freedom means letting people decide.
That sort of freedom also means letting other people do the disease controlling for you. Freeloading, in other words.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
That's great for you. What about someone in their 20s living alone, working from home in a flat in a tower block? I think you'll find they had very limited pleasures. We did sacrifice the mental health of a large chunk of the population for the continued health of our elderly population. I don't think there is much denying that.
Every journo is going to be asking: "Mr Foord, have you ever watched porn?"
He's certainly got a good excuse for being filmed by the DM buying Tractor Monthly in WH Smith.
It is odd that in the world of politics, the only people who seem worthy of praise are the "hardworking...etc, etc." "hardworking parents/families/doctorsannurses".
Why not let us all stand up for the lazy and feckless? Who speaks for them? Oh, sorry I forgot about Boris!
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
Freedom means letting people decide.
That sort of freedom also means letting other people do the disease controlling for you. Freeloading, in other words.
No it doesn't, it means determining your own risk levels and operating accordingly.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Did you lack a garden, family, kitchen and books before lockdown?
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
Freedom means letting people decide.
That sort of freedom also means letting other people do the disease controlling for you. Freeloading, in other words.
No it doesn't, it means determining your own risk levels and operating accordingly.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
What percentage of parents voluntarily kept their children at home, do you think?
Every journo is going to be asking: "Mr Foord, have you ever watched porn?"
He's certainly got a good excuse for being filmed by the DM buying Tractor Monthly in WH Smith.
"Mr Foord, what's your view on the Dominator combine harvester?"
"I dunno...let me just Goog - oh. Crikey!"
When Neil Parish was asked what his favourite make of tractor was when he was growing up he replied "oh not those boring old green John Deeres, I just loved those those really sexy blue ones, you know, the Foord. Phwoar!"
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
Freedom means letting people decide.
That sort of freedom also means letting other people do the disease controlling for you. Freeloading, in other words.
No it doesn't, it means determining your own risk levels and operating accordingly.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
Eat your heart out, Edward Jenner ...
Disease still exists post Jenner.
We can all take steps to help, but we can't elimated risk. Risk is a part of living.
Men and women have similar views on most things. The big standout is that women are notably more likely to believe in God than men are.
I cannot think of a single aspect of the abortion issue where either being religious or being secular offers any distinctive argument either way. The basic values from which the conclusions are derived are, I suggest, identical.
I suspect the most interesting people are the religious who veer towards pro-choice and the non religious who give a greater emphasis to the rights of and duties towards the unborn.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
Freedom means letting people decide.
That sort of freedom also means letting other people do the disease controlling for you. Freeloading, in other words.
No it doesn't, it means determining your own risk levels and operating accordingly.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
Eat your heart out, Edward Jenner ...
Disease still exists post Jenner.
We can all take steps to help, but we can't elimated risk. Risk is a part of living.
You said we shouldn't even try to control disease.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Lockdown was 60 million different experiences though. I'm married with no kids, but with some pets, including a dog who loves a walk. I live on the edge of a forest with fields and Salisbury plain all around. I have a decent house and a garden.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
I was living in my own in a small flat during lockdown. I had a near complete nervous breakdown in the end, prescribed diazepam amongst other things, which did very little, ended up punching holes in the wall and breaking all my furniture in desperation. Signed off sick from work, eventually left my job to work part time to recover, still suffer from anxiety and on medication now.
As you say, lockdown was 60 million different experiences. Mine was extremely bad, and I have no doubt that lockdown damaged my health far more than catching covid at my age and with my BMI/level of physical fitness ever would.
Meanwhile, some quite enjoyed the experience, working from home and giving them a feeling of solidarity and community spirit! Isn't that wonderful for them.
There are lots of PBers who have clearly learned nothing since lockdown. The old privileged superciliousness barely an inch below the surface.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
Lockdown was 60 million different experiences though. I'm married with no kids, but with some pets, including a dog who loves a walk. I live on the edge of a forest with fields and Salisbury plain all around. I have a decent house and a garden.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
I was living in my own in a small flat during lockdown. I had a near complete nervous breakdown in the end, prescribed diazepam amongst other things, which did very little, ended up punching holes in the wall and breaking all my furniture in desperation. Signed off sick from work, eventually left my job to work part time to recover, still suffer from anxiety and on medication now.
As you say, lockdown was 60 million different experiences. Mine was extremely bad, and I have no doubt that lockdown damaged my health far more than catching covid at my age and with my BMI/level of physical fitness ever would.
Really sorry to hear this. Just awful.
Thank you.
I've spoken about it on here a couple of times in the past, and essentially now it's been a year and a half since it all happened I am a lot better. But I still have days where my anxiety is too much to do fairly ordinary stuff, like drive or go to the shops.
From a less selfish perspective, the amount of time I spent off work and now with working part time only means I will be contributing a lot less to the exchequer this year.
I know other people who had a similar experience (also living alone in one bedroom flats - don't know if that is significant) so I do wonder if there is a mental health epidemic going unchecked out there.
Just popped in over lunch. Has this blog been renamed PoliticalRevisionism.com?
I've written to Priti Patel demanding a pardon for Dr Harold Shipman on the grounds he only murdered old crumblies who were already past their life expectancy. /s
Why don't we talk about the fact that a lot of children have had their education ruined by the lockdowns.
What we don't know is whether that educational disturbance would have been worse with an uncontrolled pandemic.
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
We would never have had an uncontrolled pandemic. A significant number of the public were taking cautious, voluntary measures before the lockdowns came in.
Well, exactly. Even before schools closed, a lot of parents were keeping children at home, similarly pubs and restaraunts were emptying.
That's reasonable if it's their choice. Not if it isn't.
Freedom means letting people decide.
That sort of freedom also means letting other people do the disease controlling for you. Freeloading, in other words.
No it doesn't, it means determining your own risk levels and operating accordingly.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
Eat your heart out, Edward Jenner ...
Disease still exists post Jenner.
We can all take steps to help, but we can't elimated risk. Risk is a part of living.
You said we shouldn't even try to control disease.
You need to improve your reading comprehension as I didn't use the word try. I said it can't "all" be controlled.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
Voluntarily taking actions to mitigate risk is trying. I endorsed that.
Lockdown will have affected each individually - inevitably many of the most deprived had the poorest housing:
Main findings One in five households live in flats, most commonly in blocks of three storeys or less. A relatively small number of households live in high rise flats. - In 2017-18, most households lived in houses (80% or 18.4 million). Households living in flats (20% or 4.7 million) most commonly lived in blocks of three storeys or less (14% or 3.3 million). The proportion of all households living in flats in blocks of four to five, six to nine or 10 or more storeys was comparatively small: 4% (908,000), 1% (250,000) and 1% (193,000) respectively.
Certain groups are more likely to live in high rise flats than others, e.g. renters more so than owners, younger people more so than older people, black, Asian and minority ethnic households more so than white households, and those who live in the most deprived areas. - 1% of owner occupiers lived in a high rise flat, compared with 3% of private renters and 4% of social renters.
-5%ofthoseaged16to24and4%ofthoseaged25to34livedinahighriseflat compared with 1% each of those aged 65 to 74 and 75+.
In general, households with a black, Asian or minority ethnic household reference person (HRP1) were more likely to live in a high rise flat, e.g. 3% of households with an Asian HRP and 7% with a black HRP lived in a high rise flat compared with 1% of households with a white HRP.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
You had a garden.
This was also a (non-rewritten) recurrent theme on PB. I don't know what all the fuss is about with these lockdowns I simply get up from my study and go for a walk around the paddocks perhaps through the orchard and come back refreshed.
Old well-off white blokes living in large houses with land can't see what the problem is.
Largely old well-off white blokes living in large houses with land making the decisions about lockdown, too.
The 'white' and 'bloke' are fairly irrelevant, though, I'd have thought - key things for good lockdown experience would be wealth, so not so concerned about job security, and having a house with space and ideally outside space. And family around, but perhaps not children of an age that would require intensive home-schooling!
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.
The episode over Christmas with omicron was unedifying.
The scientists wilfully ignored their colleagues in South Africa, treating evidence from there as though it was inapplicable to the UK. Whitty said: "Whatever news we do have, it's bad" or words to that effect.
But that wasn't true: the only data we did have came from the news in SA, which was good, not bad.
The only data we had was inconclusive. Early data can be wrong. The early data on swine flu was terrifying… but fortunately it turned out to very misleading and swine flu was a comparatively mild pandemic flu. The Chinese said the early data on COVID showed there was no human-to-human transmission!
So, it’s not that scientists wilfully ignored South African findings. It was that there was a lot of uncertainty about what could be concluded from the South African data. Certainly, there was very bad news in what was coming out of the country. It appeared as if there was a highly infectious new variant that would sweep around the world… and that was unfortunately true. There was also some data showing it produced less severe illness… and that was fortunately true.
Wrong. Whitty said the only news we have is bad. This was false. In fact, the entire SA medical profession was openly and repeatedly saying quite the opposite. They were ignored.
Considering one of the major failures of the first wave was the failure to stop international travel and spread, it was an enirely reasonable policy to restrict (actually just quarantine) international travel until more certain data emerges.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
Daft analogy. Whitty said the only news we have is bad.
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
No. See post above.
I have to say my perception was that there were indications from SA that Omicron was going to be generally milder, but that the authorities in the UK did not want to (a) give them credence without more information (b) allow a narrative to develop about it being milder. This goes back to the modelling question. I think it was done for the right reasons, but it was to an extent a misrepresentation of the information emerging from SA.
Yep, I think that's pretty fair. People involved in this that I spoke to at the time were privately optimistic, but very clear that - given we were going to have a lot of cases in a short time and if it did turn out bad then it would be very bad due to the number of cases - that it was important to say that we didn't know it was milder. We didn't. We hoped. The views on the ground were that it was milder. They were right, but they could have been wrong. You only need to look at early news from other diseases (and indeed some of the early ward studies on Covid) to see that observations from small, non-representative samples can be misleading.
I think you'll find the government scientist quotes about mildness were of 'not knowing that' or 'no evidence' not saying that it was not less mild. The distinction may well have been lost on some of the public.
But there was evidence that it was milder – and that evidence had been provided to them at the time.
Not evidence - anecdote. Evidence in this case would me a proper study on patients and outcomes.
That there was no time for this to have been done is true but also irrelevant. If pressed at the inquiry Whitty will say exactly this.
Comparing like for like outcomes on one strain versus another among the same national cohort is surely a form of evidence. It might not be a medical grade peer-reviewed study (as you say, no time...) but it is nevertheless empirical evidence that is worthy of consideration.
"The average age of those who have died from coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic is 82.4 years old. Using data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), researchers at the University of Oxford found that the median age of a Covid-19 fatality was slightly higher than the median age of those who died of other causes over the same period, which was 81.5."
Thought experiment. New pandemic, massively transmissible, infects everyone in short order. Kills anyone infected aged 80 or over, spares everyone below.
The median age of death from $newpandemic is > 80 (well over 80, probably) The median age of death not from $newpandemic is < 80 (well under 80, probably)
But those people killed by $newpandemic have died earlier than they otherwise would, possibly losing years of life.
I don't see what point you think you're making. If something preferentially kills old people (e.g. Covid) then it is very likely that any average age of death from the something will be higher than an average age of death not from the something.
Isn't it just more simple?
Average Life Expectancy at birth might be 81 years, but Average Life Expectency at age 81 is not zero, but more like 10 years.
Just had a look at the ONS Life Expectancy calculator.
For males in the UK:
Life expectancy at 60 is 84 At 65 is 85 At 70 is 86 At 75 is 87 At 80 is 89 At 85 is 91 At 90 is 94 At 95 is 98
Which is an average and if you extrapolate from that as you're mistakenly doing then no 80 year olds will die today, but that isn't true.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Hence the actuarial and scientific papers adjusted for these factors.
Indeed and across 31 nations even if we take their word for it, the pandemic only cost 28 million years of living freely.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
Nonsense. Lockdowns were not total, and not all freedoms were lost. I worked face to face throughout, and while there were inconveniences to social life, it was hardly a life without pleasure. Indeed like many others, I rediscovered the pleasures of garden, family, my local community, cooking, reading etc.
That's great for you. What about someone in their 20s living alone, working from home in a flat in a tower block? I think you'll find they had very limited pleasures. We did sacrifice the mental health of a large chunk of the population for the continued health of our elderly population. I don't think there is much denying that.
My support networks have always been training with friends at the gym (healthy) and letting off steam in the pub about work on a friday evening (not as healthy, but still necessary).
Shutting the gym and the pub cut me off from my social support networks and, as someone who lived alone in a one bedroom flat with no garden, from more or less all face to face human interaction. For months. It's no wonder I went a bit wrong towards the end.
Comments
Really?
I don't think there's much point in us discussing it further. I hated lockdown with a passion (for reasons I've explained earlier), but there was much we did that was far better than lying there slowly decomposing.
Even discussing on here is something that can't be done when dead. Going for walks with your family (always allowed) was better than being dead.
But people (many people) seem to struggle with that logic, so I put it a different way.
Just because someone gets away with something doesn't make it the right decision. If I drive home from the pub after 10 pints and arrive intact without injuring anything a long the way, it doesn't mean that I was right to do so.
However an 80 year old cancer-ridden and dementia-afflicted individual in a care home, versus a spritely 80 year old living in their own home, do not have the same life expectancy. And COVID sought the former far more than the latter.
Median life expectancy upon entering a care home is months, not decades.
Please accept the award for Most Stupid Fucking Comment of the Day.
Again – AGAIN – for what must be the 1,000,000th time on PB:
THE SOUTH AFRICANS WERE NOT COMPARING OMICRON (SA) TO OMICRON (UK). THEY WERE COMPARING DELTA (SA) TO OMICRON (SA).
Why do PBers STILL – even now FFS – not grasp this key fact?
(Obviously I am joking)
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/preparation_for_the_zombie_apoca
Do you accept that that was a falsehood, and that we knew it was a falsehood at the time?
Worth noting the financial donations being given by one of the manufacturers involved to the Lib Dems.
The final outcome of the Dr Webberley case will also be interesting. He has been found to have given out some of these drugs on the basis of very limited / inadequate diagnoses without proper informed consent.
It is only a matter of time before we start getting lawsuits against doctors / hospitals and insurers, especially in the US, start asking some serious questions.
https://metro.co.uk/2022/04/04/e-scooter-arsonists-set-40-cars-on-fire-in-night-of-carnage-16402002/
Watch out for similar stories on your local news.
A vote for green councillor is endorsement for all the direct action the green movement does the Green Party doesn’t call out. It’s also vote for politicians who would bankrupt country, town or city instantly if they gained power.
Going for walks with family in a care home was not always allowed actually, so you might want to get your facts straight. My nan while being kept imprisoned in a home that wouldn't let her out, and wouldn't allow visitors was not able to just go walking with loved ones. Quite the opposite, it was forbidden even if she could have still walked anymore.
Telling old people who are in a care home and are dying soon anyway that they can not have visitors, that their loved ones can't hold their hands while they die, that they can't see their great grandchildren, that they can't feel the love of visitors in their final months ... That they have to stay locked up, locked away from visitors, unable to go out, but unable to have people come to them ... That is a cruel and unusual punishment that is a fate worse than death.
It is a cruel and unusual punishment we wouldn't inflict upon convicted murderers.
That's just for the old and dying and without even getting into a value judgement of whether a young person's education may be worth more than a frail old person being kept alive for another day where they are forbidden from seeing visitors, without loved ones, without affection being even allowed.
As I have pointed out, Omicron was only identified in late November. Certainty over mortality takes several weeks to know, hence quarantine measures on flights in the meantime are prudent.
If one follows anecdotal evidence then the first officially recorded covid death was 11 Jan 2020, 12 days after the new disease was first notified to the WHO. Should we have concluded in that first week of Jan that it was not dangerous?
No one is rewriting history we are looking at what happened and making a reasonable assumption both of SKS' honesty and his intention.
*and writing that sentence for me sums up all that was wrong with lockdown - out driving in your car wondering if you would be stopped by the police for doing so.
As I remember it, there was evidence on spread of Omicron, with uncertainties (I remember seeing a chart with confidence intervals, from some official source in SA). It was worse than Delta in that sense. I don't remember seeing any scientific evidence on mortality (certainly) and hospitalisation (probably) at the point at which we were making decisions here. I also seem to recall that the initial Omicron surge was mostly among younger people in a small geographical area, which makes it hard to infer anything. There was, I think, a lack of evidence on what Omicron was like, compared to Delta, in older people in SA. That's important because bad outcomes in young people are rare with both variants, so you need a lot of data to start getting any kind of precision in estimates.
I may be wrong on this, show me a good study published* before** we made the criticised decisions and I'll change my mind.
*As in public, from some kind of reputable source - government, university etc. Doesn't have to have been peer reviewed or in a journal, that takes time
**Given it needed time to be digested, assessed and fed into government guidance, we probably need at least a few days, maybe a week before.
Lockdown and restrictions in the UK alone cost about 100 million years of living freely lost. So lockdown was quantitatively worse for the UK alone than the pandemic was across the 31 nations studied.
How is YouTube fighting Russian war propaganda?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJBihM1t5z0
There is plenty of scope to extensively review what happened in the pandemic to see what worked and what was ineffective, for future reference. Worth noting that the next pandemic may be rather different, so different measures needed.
All data is ultimately a collection of anecdote. Some data is better than others. In this case the SA doctors had seen a clear clinical presentation difference and reported it.
I think you'll find the government scientist quotes about mildness were of 'not knowing that' or 'no evidence' not saying that it was not less mild. The distinction may well have been lost on some of the public.
Whether they could be regarded as Green is another matter...
I think they've mostly stopped using it as it was eroding the very dunes they were trying to protect, although it was still parked up last time I was there.
Edit: Nope, still using it. https://www.ywt.org.uk/events/2021-09-08-spurn-safari-multiple-dates
Every single day of liberty you steal from people, whether it be the old or the young, those in education or those who want to see their loved ones while they still can, and everything in between, is a day of liberty, a day of living life freely you have stolen from people.
On any measurable metric, it is transparent lockdown cost more life and liberty than the pandemic did and ever could have.
Arguably China, Korea Taiwan, Vietnam were very effective in their first wave measures (not all of which could be described as lockdown) though these measures are now overwhelmed by Omicron. Measures may need to be tailored to the particular bug, and that may be difficult in an emerging and evolving situation.
Note, you won't see posts of mine arguing for lockdowns over the last few years, though I understood why others were arguing for them.
https://www.voanews.com/a/south-african-doctors-see-signs-omicron-is-milder-than-delta/6350072.html
Includes:
"According to South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases:
Only about 30% of those hospitalized with COVID-19 in recent weeks have been seriously ill, less than half the rate as during the first weeks of previous pandemic waves.
Average hospital stays for COVID-19 have been shorter this time -- about 2.8 days compared to eight days.
Just 3% of patients hospitalized recently with COVID-19 have died, versus about 20% in the country’s earlier outbreaks.
“At the moment, virtually everything points toward it being milder disease,” Willem Hanekom, director of the Africa Health Research Institute, said, citing the national institute’s figures and other reports. “It’s early days, and we need to get the final data.
Often hospitalizations and deaths happen later, and we are only two weeks into this wave.”
Article dated 11 December. Plan B introduced here 8 December, three days earlier and the quoted person is notably quite cautious, even at that point (may be it was said before 11 December, not clear).
Edit: sorry, plan B announced 8 December. Started to be introduced from 10 December.
That there was no time for this to have been done is true but also irrelevant. If pressed at the inquiry Whitty will say exactly this.
https://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2022/05/17/if-you-want-to-win-a-by-election-select-a-woman/
However, the LibDems have focused on his local and farming credentials, and he will appeal to disgruntled blue wall voters.
Could be a very clever selection indeed.
https://www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/lib-dems-announce-former-army-7106299
Though these days she's run off to NY.
Very much different to living in a cramped flat with large family in a city. Or living on your own in a flat.
And don't forget in a sense you were lucky to be working face to face - many would have loved to be able to do that.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-real-dividing-line-on-abortion/
Investigation? They only investigated Boris Johnson at two out of his 5 attended "events". And Simon Case? Who's Simon Case?
The News Post Leader has almost the most Geordie headline possible.
"Man Murdered after Ant and Dec Remark"
Could have been outside Gregg's I guess.
As you say, lockdown was 60 million different experiences. Mine was extremely bad, and I have no doubt that lockdown damaged my health far more than catching covid at my age and with my BMI/level of physical fitness ever would.
i) Do something or other wrong that you made the blimmin rules for.
ii) Deny it.
iii) Deny it again
iv) Set up an inquiry
v) Let a reasonably pliant met set up an investigation.
vi) Let time pass, hope other stuff comes up.
vii) Police come up with conclusions - Pay fine. Say you weren't aware you broke the rules.
viii) Say the fine's been paid the matter's dealt with & bemoan the investigation that was required because of the lack of honesty in the first place - and we should focus on the other stuff.
ix) Original investigation reports.
x) Say it was all ages ago and we're getting on with the stuff in vi).
Possibly "Topless Man"....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT8XvzIfi4U&t=4s
"It is an armoured, tracked vehicle. With a big gun.
Yep, I think it's a tank...."
Old well-off white blokes living in large houses with land can't see what the problem is.
"I dunno...let me just Goog - oh. Crikey!"
You may have found pleasure in gardening. Children being denied the right to see their friends, to go to school, to get an education may not have.
The infirm being denied the right to see their loved ones, to be able to leave their own home, to have visitors, to have an opportunity to know their great grandchildren and for their great grandchildren to have an opportunity to know them before it's too late may not have.
You may have an I'm Alright Jack attitude to being denied your freedom but others aren't and the only fair way is to compare one quantity of days with the other.
On a qualitative basis comparing whether the quality of losing your education while young is better or worse than losing your life at the end of it is a value judgement and not quantifiable.
Comparing whether the quality of losing life surrounded by loved ones at the end of a life well lived, or alone, imprisoned in your own home, dying without being legally allowed to see family in your final months is another value judgement and not quantifiable.
"He grew up in the West Country"
Freedom means letting people decide.
Why not let us all stand up for the lazy and feckless? Who speaks for them? Oh, sorry I forgot about Boris!
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
We can all take steps to help, but we can't elimated risk. Risk is a part of living.
I suspect the most interesting people are the religious who veer towards pro-choice and the non religious who give a greater emphasis to the rights of and duties towards the unborn.
I've spoken about it on here a couple of times in the past, and essentially now it's been a year and a half since it all happened I am a lot better. But I still have days where my anxiety is too much to do fairly ordinary stuff, like drive or go to the shops.
From a less selfish perspective, the amount of time I spent off work and now with working part time only means I will be contributing a lot less to the exchequer this year.
I know other people who had a similar experience (also living alone in one bedroom flats - don't know if that is significant) so I do wonder if there is a mental health epidemic going unchecked out there.
Disease is part of life, it is hubristic arrogance to say it can or must all be "controlled".
Voluntarily taking actions to mitigate risk is trying. I endorsed that.
Main findings
One in five households live in flats, most commonly in blocks of three storeys or less. A relatively small number of households live in high rise flats.
- In 2017-18, most households lived in houses (80% or 18.4 million). Households living in flats (20% or 4.7 million) most commonly lived in blocks of three storeys or less (14% or 3.3 million). The proportion of all households living in flats in blocks of four to five, six to nine or 10 or more storeys was comparatively small: 4% (908,000), 1% (250,000) and 1% (193,000) respectively.
Certain groups are more likely to live in high rise flats than others, e.g. renters more so than owners, younger people more so than older people, black, Asian and minority ethnic households more so than white households, and those who live in the most deprived areas.
- 1% of owner occupiers lived in a high rise flat, compared with 3% of private renters and 4% of social renters.
-5%ofthoseaged16to24and4%ofthoseaged25to34livedinahighriseflat compared with 1% each of those aged 65 to 74 and 75+.
In general, households with a black, Asian or minority ethnic household reference person (HRP1) were more likely to live in a high rise flat, e.g. 3% of households with an Asian HRP and 7% with a black HRP lived in a high rise flat compared with 1% of households with a white HRP.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/817286/EHS_2017-18_Households_Report.pdf
The 'white' and 'bloke' are fairly irrelevant, though, I'd have thought - key things for good lockdown experience would be wealth, so not so concerned about job security, and having a house with space and ideally outside space. And family around, but perhaps not children of an age that would require intensive home-schooling!
Shutting the gym and the pub cut me off from my social support networks and, as someone who lived alone in a one bedroom flat with no garden, from more or less all face to face human interaction. For months. It's no wonder I went a bit wrong towards the end.