** Starting now ** The European Reasearch Group of Tory MPs is meeting each Conservative candidate individually one-on-one to work out who to support. Each will be grilled by Mark Francois, Sir Bill Cash and Sir Iain Duncan Smith on getting the most out of Brexit. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546498641204023297
Are they intending to vote as a bloc?
Almost certainly, yes.
None of the ERG members have declared?
They is "frit"?
About a quarter or so have already declared. But there are a reasonably high number remaining, in comparison to other parts of the party.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my few fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
We make people wear motorcycle helmets when they ride motorcycles. We make people wear some clothes all the time in most places! I don’t think requiring face masks in shops during a global pandemic when there were hundreds of deaths per day in the country because of COVID-19 was unreasonable. The mewling of snowflakes who found this an unbearable burden is risible.
Quite. Far more damaging were nonsense ideas that you had to wear a mask to move round a stuffy pub, but you were fine to take it off when sat down. Utterly pointless. And don5 get me started on being forced to sit at separate tables if in a party of more than six outside
Residents Adrian Watson and Natalie Webb were at a birthday party, when they heard a "very loud bang, significantly louder than a domestic firework" on the street at about 01:00 GMT.
Mr Watson said he looked inside the car and saw "a white male wearing a white long-sleeve top which was tight to the body, a black leather PVC mini-skirt, tights, dark shoes with a high heel and a pearl necklace".
When he asked Mr Wallis if he was okay, he was told: "I'm sorting it. I'm sorting it." [Source: BBC]
Mordaunt's problem may actually be the pendulum effect ie given what has happened with Boris, the Conservative party may be more inclined to go with someone who has decent experience in a Cabinet post and is seen as a safe pair of hands.
If so, that narrows it down to Sunak, Javid, Hunt, Truss. Patel theoretically but probably too much of a risk. Realistically then that means Sunak / Truss / Hunt
Just been reading the head to head "voting figures" on Conservative Home. Based on that snapshot Rishi would lose to most of the other candidates (Ben Wallace would beat everyone). Rishi is probably being too honest in not seeking early tax cuts and suggesting his opponents are telling fairy stories. The lure of unfunded tax cuts seems to be more enticing to Tory members. Not too confident about Mike's bet!!
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
Nah. There is an honest libertarian credo, which includes the idea that freedom stops when it harms others. Going beyond that is when libertarianism turns into selfishness.
The question is what you consider to be harm. Be extremist enough and you can consider anything to be harming others, so you need to draw the line somewhere.
For me, going out and stabbing others would be across the line. For me, going out unmasked and breathing, while you have a common cold, a cough, or COVID for which everyone has been offered the vaccines is not.
You wouldn't wear a simple surgical mask, in a supermarket, even tho you know you have Covid and you are breathing dangerous germs everywhere?
That's just dick behaviour. Juvenile. It's a teenager vandalising a fucking bus stop. Grow up
An MP has been found guilty of failing to stop & report an accident after crashing his car in the early hours of the morning in November last year. Jamie Wallis, the MP for Bridgend, was also found guilty of leaving his car in a dangerous position. 1/2
He was cleared of a charge of driving without due care and attention. He awaits sentencing. via @hywel_griffith
Political party?
Tory. Dont think anyone else was involved/no injury so prison highly unlikely. No by election
Remember that you needn't go to prison for the Recall of MPs Act to apply, as a suspended sentence will trigger a petition.
However, I agree that this seems far more likely to just be a fine/points on his licence given that he was cleared on the charge of driving without due care and attention.
Full admission, my daughter goes to private school and my son will when he is old enough.
British private schools are internationally leading; and although mentally I accept that they should not be given tax breaks, my heart says why disturb the existing, successful eco-system?
Britain spends roughly the same on education as its peers, and PISA results are “ok”, or even “good”.
The issue seems to be a large cohort at the bottom of people leaving school without basic skills, especially outside London.
It's politics of envy. The left doesn't want to create a level playing field, they just want to ensure that everyone fails in the state system, which is what would happen if it suddenly had to deal with a whole bunch of private schools kids with no additional funding.
Why would there be no additional funding? I would be fairly confident that funding per pupil would go up not down if the 6% richest/most well connected/most pushy parents suddenly had a stake in the state education system. And people keep asserting that "the Left" want to level down and for everyone to fail. Where is the evidence for that? Speaking for myself, I believe every child should have the same opportunity to succeed. I believe in the state education system, although I wish it was better resourced. I am a product of that system, and did well out of it. I have three children in that system. Do you really think I don't want that system to do the best possible job educating my children? That I want them to fail? What planet are you living on?
Quite simply, the richest parents would continue to pay the fees and send their kids to private schools. They wouldn't be any more invested in the state sector than they are now.
And the savings made by changing the tax status of private schools would not make any noticeable impact on pupil funding levels.
Full admission, my daughter goes to private school and my son will when he is old enough.
British private schools are internationally leading; and although mentally I accept that they should not be given tax breaks, my heart says why disturb the existing, successful eco-system?
Britain spends roughly the same on education as its peers, and PISA results are “ok”, or even “good”.
The issue seems to be a large cohort at the bottom of people leaving school without basic skills, especially outside London.
I have less problem with selection by parental wealth than I do with selection by "crammed" 11 plus results. At least there is no pretence of meritocracy in the private sector. If one wants to spend almost £10k per term plus boarding fees, so be it.
I don't agree with the notion of charitable status for private schools, unless that is offset by some genuine system of fully funded scholarships for gifted underprivileged children, breaking a generation to generation cycle of lifetime welfare benefits (perhaps children currently under the guardianship of local authorities or similar).
Well I agree with choice, including more grammar schools, which now select at 13 and 16 too and scholarships and bursaries to private schools which charitable status helps fund
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
.. based on?
Science. The fact that there is something like 1 in 30 infected in England and nothing else has any restrictions means wearing a mask on a bus is almost pointless. If others wish to that’s up to them.
An MP has been found guilty of failing to stop & report an accident after crashing his car in the early hours of the morning in November last year. Jamie Wallis, the MP for Bridgend, was also found guilty of leaving his car in a dangerous position. 1/2
He was cleared of a charge of driving without due care and attention. He awaits sentencing. via @hywel_griffith
Very unlikely to mean a jail sentence though. So highly unlikely we'll see a bye-election.
Result! And he keeps his licence. I wonder if that would have been the case if he had waited in Llanblethian for plod to turn up.
I'm guessing a vote for Mordaunt, bearing in mind her views on transgender rights.
You mean he was wearing high heels and mini skirt at the time? Or just trying to bait us Penny fans with nonsense woke tag?
Residents Adrian Watson and Natalie Webb were at a birthday party, when they heard a "very loud bang, significantly louder than a domestic firework" on the street at about 01:00 GMT.
Mr Watson said he looked inside the car and saw "a white male wearing a white long-sleeve top which was tight to the body, a black leather PVC mini-skirt, tights, dark shoes with a high heel and a pearl necklace".
When he asked Mr Wallis if he was okay, he was told: "I'm sorting it. I'm sorting it." [Source: BBC]
ScotRail train drivers accept new pay deal to end disruption
ScotRail drivers will see their pay climb by 5% and also get more money for rest day and Sunday working, driving instructor and maternity pay along with a policy of no compulsory redundancies for the next five years. The nationalised train operator said 2.2% of the increase would be funded by Transport Scotland with the remaining 2.8% coming from ScotRail's funds. ScotRail came back into public ownership for the first time in 25 years in April, after previous operator Abellio had its franchise ended early over criticism of the quality of the service.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
.. based on?
Science. The fact that there is something like 1 in 30 infected in England and nothing else has any restrictions means wearing a mask on a bus is almost pointless. If others wish to that’s up to them.
** Starting now ** The European Reasearch Group of Tory MPs is meeting each Conservative candidate individually one-on-one to work out who to support. Each will be grilled by Mark Francois, Sir Bill Cash and Sir Iain Duncan Smith on getting the most out of Brexit. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546498641204023297
If I went for a job and that was the interview panel, I'd withdraw my application.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my few fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
We make people wear motorcycle helmets when they ride motorcycles. We make people wear some clothes all the time in most places! I don’t think requiring face masks in shops during a global pandemic when there were hundreds of deaths per day in the country because of COVID-19 was unreasonable. The mewling of snowflakes who found this an unbearable burden is risible.
The normalisation of dehumanising people for minimal gain was outrageous.
** Starting now ** The European Reasearch Group of Tory MPs is meeting each Conservative candidate individually one-on-one to work out who to support. Each will be grilled by Mark Francois, Sir Bill Cash and Sir Iain Duncan Smith on getting the most out of Brexit. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546498641204023297
Are they intending to vote as a bloc?
Almost certainly, yes.
None of the ERG members have declared?
They is "frit"?
They have a question about fringe candidate who will sound perfect to their ears, or mobilise around a big hitter to stop another big hitter getting it.
Raab is for some reason deemed by Betfair as 10x more likely to be the next PM as the next Tory leader.
I guess because he's still deputy PM, so if Johnson walks out/keels over, he ends up as PM but not party leader?
There's always the rather more likely scenario that something deadly serious comes out, or he makes another egregious cock-up, and lies about it again. So much so that they can't tolerate another minute. Then Raab becomes PM. There is a far from zero chance of this before September.
Mordaunt's problem may actually be the pendulum effect ie given what has happened with Boris, the Conservative party may be more inclined to go with someone who has decent experience in a Cabinet post and is seen as a safe pair of hands.
If so, that narrows it down to Sunak, Javid, Hunt, Truss. Patel theoretically but probably too much of a risk. Realistically then that means Sunak / Truss / Hunt
Well currently none of those make the top 3 in terms of MP endorsements except Sunak.
Currently it is Sunak 37 MPs, Mordaunt 21 MPs and Tugendhat 18 MPs as the top 3. Then Truss with 16 and Hunt with 14.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
@SebastianEPayne More policy: @KemiBadenoch announces she would scrap the Online Harms Bill ("legislating for hurt feelings") if she becomes prime minister due to concerns about freedom of speech.
"The crucial thing is to celebrate the power and importance of free speech in our wider culture. "
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my few fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
We make people wear motorcycle helmets when they ride motorcycles. We make people wear some clothes all the time in most places! I don’t think requiring face masks in shops during a global pandemic when there were hundreds of deaths per day in the country because of COVID-19 was unreasonable. The mewling of snowflakes who found this an unbearable burden is risible.
Quite. Far more damaging were nonsense ideas that you had to wear a mask to move round a stuffy pub, but you were fine to take it off when sat down. Utterly pointless. And don5 get me started on being forced to sit at separate tables if in a party of more than six outside
And of course its vital to protect others in a 5 second interaction in a shop when you then go home and hang around everyone in your household for hours without a mask on.
Raab is for some reason deemed by Betfair as 10x more likely to be the next PM as the next Tory leader.
I guess because he's still deputy PM, so if Johnson walks out/keels over, he ends up as PM but not party leader?
Raab is not standing for the leadership but might become prime minister for a couple of weeks if Boris succumbs to long covid or the menopause before the election is over.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
.. based on?
Science. The fact that there is something like 1 in 30 infected in England and nothing else has any restrictions means wearing a mask on a bus is almost pointless. If others wish to that’s up to them.
And if you know you've got Covid?
If you know you "have Covid", i.e. are actually sick, then you should be staying at home as wearing a mask isn't really going to help.
An MP has been found guilty of failing to stop & report an accident after crashing his car in the early hours of the morning in November last year. Jamie Wallis, the MP for Bridgend, was also found guilty of leaving his car in a dangerous position. 1/2
He was cleared of a charge of driving without due care and attention. He awaits sentencing. via @hywel_griffith
Very unlikely to mean a jail sentence though. So highly unlikely we'll see a bye-election.
Result! And he keeps his licence. I wonder if that would have been the case if he had waited in Llanblethian for plod to turn up.
I'm guessing a vote for Mordaunt, bearing in mind her views on transgender rights.
You mean he was wearing high heels and mini skirt at the time? Or just trying to bait us Penny fans with nonsense woke tag?
Well yes and sort of yes.
Jamie has proffered to his constituents that he intends to become transgender. I have no problem with that whatsoever. It is his business and none of mine. Neither do I have any problem with Ms. Mordaunt's open minded view on transgender issues, quite the opposite in fact, but the Conservative Party might not share my view.
** Starting now ** The European Reasearch Group of Tory MPs is meeting each Conservative candidate individually one-on-one to work out who to support. Each will be grilled by Mark Francois, Sir Bill Cash and Sir Iain Duncan Smith on getting the most out of Brexit. https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1546498641204023297
Does it really mean one-on-one? As in each person gets grilled by Francois, alone, then Cash, alone, then IDS, alone - Apprentice style, but duller? And then they feedback to Alan Sugar the other loons?
Surely they mean one at a time with a panel of the three Brexit musketeers, possibly with an audience?
Personally I think Truss’s was the best campaign launch video.
Doesn’t mean she should be PM of course.
I can see why Roger, our PB expert on such things, thinks the Liz flick is the best of the films so far, it was pretty effective in tone, pitch and sobriety, about what needs to be fixed and delivered from day one, so selling herself as a sort of “oven ready PM” to try and find some advantage over opponents.
Oven Ready Liz - For All Those Hungry Right Now Problems
And while I'm here, on private schools and charitable status. I live adjacent to a large, famous independent school, and know people who work there. They have just spent millions on new buildings and a sports centre. The school contributes absolutely nothing charitable to the local community. Zilch. The school and its students live in a complete bubble. No outsider can use any of their facilities, and to the best of my knowledge they don't help any other local schools. Its students spend money in local shops, which helps, and they generously allow locals to watch their cricket matches in summer. That's it.
Charitable my arse.
Tries to work out which of 3 private schools like that that I think it is (as I can't remember where you live)..
But all 3 schools really do far less than they should do...
I will add all 3 private schools are up North, Eton actually does a lot locally and in the surrounding areas...
Eton sponsors two schools in the State sector, and runs a whole bundle of initiatives, does it not?
Eton does a whole pile of stuff - the issue really isn't them the issue is elsewhere in the private school sector.
1 example at some point this week Eton will be hosting the end of school prom for a reasonably close secondary school - they've done it now for 20 odd years at a cost well below the going rate.
Hosting an event once per year at below the going rate (so still charging) is hardly a brilliant example of charitable largesse. Lots of profit-making companies do similar things.
An MP has been found guilty of failing to stop & report an accident after crashing his car in the early hours of the morning in November last year. Jamie Wallis, the MP for Bridgend, was also found guilty of leaving his car in a dangerous position. 1/2
He was cleared of a charge of driving without due care and attention. He awaits sentencing. via @hywel_griffith
Very unlikely to mean a jail sentence though. So highly unlikely we'll see a bye-election.
Result! And he keeps his licence. I wonder if that would have been the case if he had waited in Llanblethian for plod to turn up.
I'm guessing a vote for Mordaunt, bearing in mind her views on transgender rights.
You mean he was wearing high heels and mini skirt at the time? Or just trying to bait us Penny fans with nonsense woke tag?
Well yes and sort of yes.
Jamie has proffered to his constituents that he intends to become transgender. I have no problem with that whatsoever. It is his business and none of mine. Neither do I have any problem with Ms. Mordaunt's open minded view on transgender issues, quite the opposite in fact, but the Conservative Party might not share my view.
I don't mind Ms Mordaunt having different views on self-ID to mine but I do mind very much that she lies about them. She is now claiming, wrongly, that she was the one who fought to remove the gender neutral language in the Maternity Bill so that the word "woman" was used. This is a lie. She was the one who introduced the gender neutral language. It was the Lords who threw the gender neutral language out and she was forced to accept it.
Not the first time she has lied - see the nonsense she spoke during the Brexit campaign. Good at PR and getting herself on TV but in a campaign allegedly based on integrity she has more than a touch of Boris about her.
So does Ms Braverman - see the way she has presented her CV. She also talks utter nonsense about the NI protocol and the ECHR. Completely out of her depth as A-G let alone as PM.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
Nah. There is an honest libertarian credo, which includes the idea that freedom stops when it harms others. Going beyond that is when libertarianism turns into selfishness.
The question is what you consider to be harm. Be extremist enough and you can consider anything to be harming others, so you need to draw the line somewhere.
For me, going out and stabbing others would be across the line. For me, going out unmasked and breathing, while you have a common cold, a cough, or COVID for which everyone has been offered the vaccines is not.
What you are forgetting is that (a) the vaccines do not give complete protecttion and (b) many people are not benefiting from them because they cannot take them: not through their wish, but through conditions suich as transplants.
I'm not forgetting that, I know that full well but don't care.
Life isn't perfect. For the minority of people who are immunocompromised, its up to them to take whatever steps they need to take, not for the rest of society to do so.
Regarding how to choose a Prime Minister, Cecil Northcote Parkinson of Parkinson’s law fame said that the right job advert would only yield the one candidate who was perfect for the job. For the role of Prime Minister he suggested that the winning applicant agree to be executed if their popularity slips below 40%. Then only someone who felt very sure that the country would be pleased with their performance would apply.
“In Against Timocrates (139), Demosthenes praises the system for proposing laws in the western Greek city of Locris: a speaker proposing a law was required to stand with a noose around his neck. If the speaker failed to persuade the voters to pass the law he was hanged on the spot.”
Full admission, my daughter goes to private school and my son will when he is old enough.
British private schools are internationally leading; and although mentally I accept that they should not be given tax breaks, my heart says why disturb the existing, successful eco-system?
Britain spends roughly the same on education as its peers, and PISA results are “ok”, or even “good”.
The issue seems to be a large cohort at the bottom of people leaving school without basic skills, especially outside London.
It's politics of envy. The left doesn't want to create a level playing field, they just want to ensure that everyone fails in the state system, which is what would happen if it suddenly had to deal with a whole bunch of private schools kids with no additional funding.
Why would there be no additional funding? I would be fairly confident that funding per pupil would go up not down if the 6% richest/most well connected/most pushy parents suddenly had a stake in the state education system. And people keep asserting that "the Left" want to level down and for everyone to fail. Where is the evidence for that? Speaking for myself, I believe every child should have the same opportunity to succeed. I believe in the state education system, although I wish it was better resourced. I am a product of that system, and did well out of it. I have three children in that system. Do you really think I don't want that system to do the best possible job educating my children? That I want them to fail? What planet are you living on?
The structural problem here is geographical imbalance, some state schools are better than others, and this is largely correllated to the socio economic character of an area. I always use the example of Peter Symonds College in Winchester, which has a catchment area with very high house prices. The parents of children in these areas, who already have a decent deal (free schooling, appreciating house prices) are the winners. The losers are the parents in poor areas for whom private schooling becomes unviable, who are then forced in to fighting with the state school system. So it isn't really a fair policy, in fact its an unfair policy, but one that makes labour voters (largely affluent people drawn from wealthy areas with good state schools) feel good about themselves. Its a pretty divisive policy all in all, a bad road to go down.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
.. based on?
Science. The fact that there is something like 1 in 30 infected in England and nothing else has any restrictions means wearing a mask on a bus is almost pointless. If others wish to that’s up to them.
Interesting how divided it is - from that, it looks as if at least eleven should be able to get the eight nominations required under the existing system (Shapps is just below but will presumably get the extra name, Chishti is clearly a joke candidate, and Patel is yet to declare).
It does seem likely the 1922 Committee will change the rules this evening to set a much higher bar. Eleven would add to the impression of chaos and be very open to extremely odd tactical voting in the successive rounds.
Interesting to read the messages under the names. I wonder if people know quite how barking mad contributors to Conservative Home are? I think you'd be worried if you thought you might be walking past one of these people on your way home from work.
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
.. based on?
Science. The fact that there is something like 1 in 30 infected in England and nothing else has any restrictions means wearing a mask on a bus is almost pointless. If others wish to that’s up to them.
And if you know you've got Covid?
If I knew I had Covid I'd do the same as if I knew I had a cold, or cough. I'd cover my mouth if needing to cough, cover my nose when blowing it, use tissues and wash my hands.
Other than that, I'd live normally.
I'd be happy to go shopping, go to a restaurant, go to a theatre, cinema, airport, train or anywhere else. And I wouldn't wear a mask, just as I wouldn't if I had a cold.
I wouldn't visit someone who was immunocompromised, but I wouldn't if I had a cold or cough either.
Commons sitting delayed because of water leaking into chamber
"Today’s sitting of the House of Commons has been delayed because water has bee pouring in through the ceiling of the chamber after a suspected leak, PA Media reports.
"Buckets were catching drips around the green benches, with a clean-up operation under way amid efforts to keep the central table dry with protective coverings.
It was unclear what was causing the leak since the weather in Westminster was very warm and dry.
A message on the annunciator monitors in Parliament states: “Today’s sitting is delayed due to a water leak in the chamber. Revised sitting time to be announced.”
Police officers could be seen entering the Commons chamber with what appeared to be water-absorbent blankets.
Entry to the chamber was restricted while the issue was being dealt with.
Labour MP Emma Hardy who briefly walked into the Commons chamber before being turned away told PA the water leak appears to be “just in front of the despatch box”.
She said said: “I have just walked through and there are a lot of people working, around six or seven. Lots of blankets on the floor and a machine, which I’m not quite sure what is doing. It [the leak] is just in front of the despatch box, but the roof looks fine.”
Which PM candidate is going to admit that Westminster is now past it's prime and needs to be replaced
and that replacement needs to be outside London.
Rwanda?
Edinburgh. Stir the pot.
We had a charming and bijou little debating chamber for 100 or so , but have found a much better use for it:
Any country other than China would've gotten a lot more flak for this (while retaliation against the US would be just as minimal, criticism would be way louder).
The fools meddled with something entirely unnecessarily and didn't even safeguard it, infecting the whole world.
Weaning ourselves away from Chinese economic integration is not only a useful logistical safeguard, it's also a justified response given their stupidity over this.
That isn't the substantive part of my comment
Long Covid is the issue. I really want that Twitter guy to be wrong, but I am struggling to see how he IS wrong. With every infection by Covid, you run a risk of Long Covid, perhaps a 20% risk. This means a steady accumulation of Long Covid in society until almost everyone is shuffling from bed to chair and wheezing all the time, incapable of work
And this could happen over a few short years, not in a century
As the Twitter dude says, new vaccines will come along and possibly save us from the worst of this. But what if they don't? Or what if they can only ameliorate? We are staring at an imminent global health disaster which will make everything else on our plates - Ukraine, inflation - seem trivial
And then there is a real risk that with each Covid infection the body is weakened, in and of itself a bad thing, but might also mean the risks of Long Covid go UP
This rather assumes that Long Covid is a real thing, rather than being a catch-all term blamed for everything which affects people who happen to have had covid.
I know this is quite a terrifying prospect. but denying it doesn't help
There has been a long-running problem with the entire covid subject: those who dislike the effects of covid, especially any restrictions, often default to full-on denial. It doesn't matter how often the denialism is discredited, whatever the denialists come up with gets trumpeted.
(There's an analogous issue on the alarmist side as well, unfortunately. Possibly down to the natural human tendency of binary thinking).
It's quite possibly due to the very understandable dislike of the effects of restrictions. Unfortunately, in some minds the logic chain goes: 1 - I hate these 2 - They are therefore wrong 3 - They are supposed to be helping. But if they are wrong, they cannot be helping 4 - They are therefore either unnecessary (and covid doesn't exist, or it is a minor issue, or it has already gone away forever) or do not help (and the reductions in spread just happen to occur at the same time), or are more harmful than letting it rip.
And some seem to seek some form of confirmation of that, no matter how logically implausible or strained the reasoning gets. Ivor Cummins has made a fortune from servicing this need. Toby Young has set up pretty much an industry around it. Sadly, both tend to join with the antivaxxers as well (possibly due to the fact that the logic of restrictions - to defer the spread until vaccines were available - relied on vaccines. Which adds an extra line to the "logic" 5 - As vaccines were needed to make restrictions work out long-term, they must either be useless or harmful, and justified solely by a worldwide conspiracy.
Denial is comforting.
As it happens, I'm not fully convinced that the fate of Long Covid lies in front of all of us, but I may be descending into denialism myself. We already know that self-reported long covid rates dropped enormously against infection rates following vaccination (not, unfortunately, to zero, but a long way down - from one in twelve to one in forty). It is plausible that surviving infection would help just as much. And we also know that immunity from breakthrough infection (vax plus infection immunity) is considerably stronger than either alone.
It is therefore plausible to me (a layperson, I must highlight) that subsequent infections would each by progressively less and less likely to cause Long Covid. Meaning that we wouldn't all inevitably get it, but it would rise to a certain (low) level and no higher.
I dont accept its denialism (although that is a factor), its the fact we were continually asked to accept varying and intrusive restrictions on the basis of 'the science' and 'the science has changed' without being presented with that science (just some pretty graphs made by modellers ans mathmeticians) Masks were ineffective, then they were 'our best line of defence' and needed 'because of asymptomatic blah blah blah' (now shown to be massively overstated) yet there was no bombshell 'the Billy Bluebottle report on masking' that entered the public domain to 'change the science'. Lockdown itself was an entirely new approach and the world were the guinea pigs. It was back of fag packet bollocks that ruined lives. Thats why it will never be allowed again, or flat out ignored.
Hong Kong now saying they will be electronically tagging quaratiners to ensure they dont leave home. Covid hysteria will prevent governments from being able to deal with any pandemic in the future without full on authoritarianisn due to mass non compliance.
How have you not been presented with the science? There are estimated to be over 87,000 published papers on COIVD. After an initial period, SAGE minutes and supporting papers were all being published. The main COVID project I worked on alone has released 45 reports produced for SAGE and Govt, as well as a dozen published papers and another dozen preprints.
All the research was being done in a hurry. We didn’t know anything at the start, and we got a lot of things wrong at first. There wasn’t a bombshell report on masking because that isn’t how medical science generally operates. There was an accumulation of evidence that built up over time.
No there wasnt. There was 'masks are not effective against Covid' then 'mask mandates'. Overnight. Pretty much everywhere. And yes of course papers have been written, with widely different conclusions. Which ones are we trusting? Why are we not trusting the others? Why did we not listen to the South Afrucan medical community in November/December? None of this was presented to the public. We were just expected to 'believe' the only way was lockdown. To clarify 'presented with the science' i mean 'you are being locked in your home because we believe the data in reports x, y and z' which of course never happened. Its clearly not reasinable to expect any lay person to read every paper issued and draw conclusions.
The change in advice on masks was definitely not overnight. It was agonised over and argued over.
Lots of papers are published. Some have widely divergent conclusions, but generally the science coalesces around a consensus. That can take time, and everything had to be done very quickly in the pandemic. Which papers do we trust? Well, we examine the methods and come to conclusions based on our understanding of what is good science. If you want details, do an OU science degree or try some of the good educational resources on YouTube like Crash Course.
Why did we not listen to the South African medical community in Nov/Dec? Well, we did. There were very early reports, there was uncertainty about what could be concluded from those reports, those reports were saying different things. Government actions generally err on the side of caution, so it’s not just about your best estimate of what will happen, but having to take into account the uncertainty in predictions. However, broadly, the UK response to Omicron was pretty limited in terms of restrictions. We didn’t have another lockdown. We went from advising people to wear masks on public transport to telling people to wear masks on public transport (with minimal enforcement).
It’s not reasonable to expect lay people to read every paper and draw conclusions. But nor is it reasonable for lay people to then make up stories about how much science was published or what the evidence-to-policy process was, as you are doing.
I think the Government could have done more to explain the science. At times, they certainly failed to do that well (e.g. over the pingdemic, as I am writing a paper on).
In a free society, enforcing face masks wasn't in my view ever acceptable - especially in private shops.
Hilariously, every single person I know who adores masks has caught covid. Most of my fellow non-maskers haven't. I'm not implying any causation whatsoever. But it does make one think 'maybe they didn't really do anything at all, in the wild'.
After two and a half fucking years, how can someone write this drivel?
Wearing a mask protects those AROUND you, not you; if they wear a mask, they protect YOU
For a certain kind of libertarian, it creates a massive "Does Not Compute" problem. It highlights a direct way that we can never be absolute masters of our own destiny, but depend on others.
"No man is an island" isn't self-evident, which is why it's so powerful when it's said.
It's not a does not compute problem. It's a priority problem.
I don't want to protect others. It's not a priority for me. I have absolutely zero intentions of isolating if infected, or wearing a mask, as I don't intend to stop the spread or prevent infections.
If someone wants to wear a mask to protect themselves or others, that's their choice. My choice is not to.
I intend to live with the virus. If I get it, I don't care. If I infect others, I don't care. Taking basic precautions is washing hands, covering mouth when coughing etc, nothing more.
"If I infect others, I don't care."
The libertarian credo in a nutshell.
I still wear a mask on trains and buses because I CARE about my own health and the health of others.
Sadly this is where it’s divisive. For too many mask wearers the counter situation implies if I dont where a mask I don’t care about others. In reality I have made a judgement about risks and come to a different conclusion.
.. based on?
Science. The fact that there is something like 1 in 30 infected in England and nothing else has any restrictions means wearing a mask on a bus is almost pointless. If others wish to that’s up to them.
And if you know you've got Covid?
If I knew I had Covid I'd do the same as if I knew I had a cold, or cough. I'd cover my mouth if needing to cough, cover my nose when blowing it, use tissues and wash my hands.
Other than that, I'd live normally.
I'd be happy to go shopping, go to a restaurant, go to a theatre, cinema, airport, train or anywhere else. And I wouldn't wear a mask, just as I wouldn't if I had a cold.
I wouldn't visit someone who was immunocompromised, but I wouldn't if I had a cold or cough either.
I thought the principle was that you should be able to do what you like provided it doesn't directly harm someone else.
If you are spreading Covid, that does rather break the rule.
Comments
Pressure on Truss I think.
Residents Adrian Watson and Natalie Webb were at a birthday party, when they heard a "very loud bang, significantly louder than a domestic firework" on the street at about 01:00 GMT.
Mr Watson said he looked inside the car and saw "a white male wearing a white long-sleeve top which was tight to the body, a black leather PVC mini-skirt, tights, dark shoes with a high heel and a pearl necklace".
When he asked Mr Wallis if he was okay, he was told: "I'm sorting it. I'm sorting it." [Source: BBC]
Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend).
I have always found Bridgend a rather dull town.
That's just dick behaviour. Juvenile. It's a teenager vandalising a fucking bus stop. Grow up
However, I agree that this seems far more likely to just be a fine/points on his licence given that he was cleared on the charge of driving without due care and attention.
And the savings made by changing the tax status of private schools would not make any noticeable impact on pupil funding levels.
So it fails as a policy in so many levels
So much so that they can't tolerate another minute.
Then Raab becomes PM.
There is a far from zero chance of this before September.
Currently it is Sunak 37 MPs, Mordaunt 21 MPs and Tugendhat 18 MPs as the top 3. Then Truss with 16 and Hunt with 14.
Javid just launched his campaign
https://conservativehome.com/2022/07/11/next-tory-leader-whos-backing-whom-our-working-list/
This thread has failed to get on the members' ballot
It just looks so wrong 🤦♀️
Markets latest: https://trib.al/yuxGivg https://twitter.com/BloombergUK/status/1546508863914102785/photo/1
Jamie has proffered to his constituents that he intends to become transgender. I have no problem with that whatsoever. It is his business and none of mine. Neither do I have any problem with Ms. Mordaunt's open minded view on transgender issues, quite the opposite in fact, but the Conservative Party might not share my view.
Surely they mean one at a time with a panel of the three Brexit musketeers, possibly with an audience?
Oven Ready Liz - For All Those Hungry Right Now Problems
https://twitter.com/trussliz/status/1546399020754550784?s=20&t=VJPzY7sUkZyZ9BTin7SLYg
If it was based on hair styles I think Liz cleans up. Fortunately it is not! 💇♀️
https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EURUSD:CUR
Might it have been better to frame that as "Dollar gains"?
Not the first time she has lied - see the nonsense she spoke during the Brexit campaign. Good at PR and getting herself on TV but in a campaign allegedly based on integrity she has more than a touch of Boris about her.
So does Ms Braverman - see the way she has presented her CV. She also talks utter nonsense about the NI protocol and the ECHR. Completely out of her depth as A-G let alone as PM.
Don't know much about Kemi.
Life isn't perfect. For the minority of people who are immunocompromised, its up to them to take whatever steps they need to take, not for the rest of society to do so.
“In Against Timocrates (139), Demosthenes praises the system for proposing laws in the western Greek city of Locris: a speaker proposing a law was required to stand with a noose around his neck. If the speaker failed to persuade the voters to pass the law he was hanged on the spot.”
Other than that, I'd live normally.
I'd be happy to go shopping, go to a restaurant, go to a theatre, cinema, airport, train or anywhere else. And I wouldn't wear a mask, just as I wouldn't if I had a cold.
I wouldn't visit someone who was immunocompromised, but I wouldn't if I had a cold or cough either.
https://tinyurl.com/2mdy4hjf
If you are spreading Covid, that does rather break the rule.