Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Can we please stop battering poor Miss QUALY?
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Surely it could also be argued that the fastest way to stop the pandemic is to give the vaccine to the group that spreads the virus the most? Start with Uni students?
The number of refugees resettled in safe countries will hit a record low in 2020, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned, as it urged the UK government to restart its flagship programme.
This is from the Guardian, and is sad. My question is this. As the countries all these good people are fleeing are members of the UN shouldn't the focus be on why you can both be a member of the UN and have people fleeing your borders to settle in other UN countries. Isn't that the first issue to sort?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Can we please stop battering poor Miss QUALY?
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
Where did I bash qualy? I merely challenged stocky on his view that how many years you had left was how you valued a life.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
-----
It is hard to tell who are the bigger snowflakes here, the people who object to the original lyrics being sung, or the people who object to an ongoing modernisation process that has happened with language throughout history. Both should find something better to argue about.
It's not like that the evidence in favour of mask wearing is huge and overwhelming; when a study comes along with a few dozen people, is far too small to get statistical significance of anything, and then states they didn't find statistical significance of anything, we all look puzzled.
Meanwhile...
Obviously, the difference between mask wearing and not masking wearing in Oklahoma is explained by the number of stolen Trump ballots.
Just a question, if the radio were to play a song with the word "nigger" in it from several decades ago, do people still believe this is appropriate
"Straight Outta Compton"?
That's 32 years old now, old enough to be a grandparent. Still sounds good today.
That's obviously not what I meant and you're being disingenuous by using it as an example. "Nigger" in that context is very different to the usage historically and by white people against black people.
Its not disingenuous whatsoever it is the word being used.
Fairytale of New York has an even more innocent and acceptable use of lyrics than that does.
It is, because a black person using the word "nigger" in this context is not being racist, in some sense black people have re-defined/re-owned the word.
If a white person called somebody a nigger today, clearly it's racist, it's completely different as you well know.
Its not disingenuous as the question was never about white people or drawing a distinction.
Your question (in the context of talking about Fairytale of New York) was just this: "Just a question, if the radio were to play a song with the word "nigger" in it from several decades ago, do people still believe this is appropriate"
Straight Outta Compton is from several decades ago. It ticks every box of your question. And the context was immediately after discussing Fairytale of New York so don't try and change this into some twisted black versus white thing - if you meant that you should have said that but you did not.
So can you answer your own question: If the radio were to play [Straight Outta Compton which is from several decades ago], do [you] still believe this is appropriate"?
I'm happy to clarify what I meant, as you so wish.
So what you're saying is that it is acceptable to play it and context is what matters?
In which case green light for Fairytale of New York. The context is entirely fine, we all know that.
I agree with you but I don’t have a problem with it being sanitized. The changes will not butcher the song. FONY will remain what it is - a gritty antidote to the traditional Christmas musical mush. Shane MacGowan, in good voice but looking like his days on earth are numbered, dueting with Kirsty MacColl, also in good voice and whose days were sadly numbered. It’s a song for those who like things a bit edgy and shy away from sentimentality. People like me in other words. Except for the awkward fact that I don’t really enjoy listening to it. I’d actually – and I kid you not – rather hear We Wish You A Wombling Merry Christmas. Can’t remember who it’s by, but it’s underrated imo. Jaunty and unpretentious. However my favourite Christmas song is Johnny Mathis “When a Child”. I like the restraint of that. It brings a lump.
The number of refugees resettled in safe countries will hit a record low in 2020, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned, as it urged the UK government to restart its flagship programme.
This is from the Guardian, and is sad. My question is this. As the countries all these good people are fleeing are members of the UN shouldn't the focus be on why you can both be a member of the EU and have people fleeing your borders to settle in other UN countries. Isn't that the first issue to sort?
As the countries all these good people are fleeing are members of the UN EU shouldn't the focus be on why you can both be a member of the UN EU and have people fleeing your borders to settle in other UN countries. Isn't that the first issue to sort?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
I don't really see how it is possible to argue with that. The order is by what they are calling "high to low risk stratification".
And they are going to have to stick to it firmly all it will all get politicked.
On the original point, I think if you overlay "value of a life" (once you have decided who deserves how much to live), onto the risk, then the same order will emerge; the risk diifferences are orders of magnitude, and I think that term will dominate.
Equally, there's a reasonable argument that says that if n only has a few years left, then those are more valuable than the same number of years from somebody who has 10x as much life remaining.
It's an impossible conversation.
I think the only vaguely justifiable argument would be to broaden the definition of care workers to include high contact people such as bus drivers.
However, i think that we have the infrastructure in place to do the vaccinations quickly enough to make the conversation less relevant.
Though obviously our media will manufacture a humongous, divisive controversy even if one does not exist.
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis.
There was. The NHS placed a huge order for masks in February, from the leading European supplier, based in France. You get one guess. One side effect of this will be a lot more on-shoring of basic health care capability like this going forward.
Indeed.
Sorry to be a party pooper but in a pandemic is not this sort of reaction entirely foreseeable - that countries would requisition material made in their country and would override any normal commercial contracts? So did we have plans for this? If not, why not? A pandemic was identified as one of the highest risks we faced. So what the hell preparation was made?
In a few weeks we may well have shortages in basic necessities. It would be nice to think the government had a plan. But what I won’t accept is more profiteering by friends of government ministers because the latter can’t make any bloody plans for foreseeable events and then using their negligence to justify said profiteering.
I'm sure there were plans but there is an old saying that "no plan survives contact with the enemy".
Adaptability is also a part of turning plans into reality.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis.
There was. The NHS placed a huge order for masks in February, from the leading European supplier, based in France. You get one guess. One side effect of this will be a lot more on-shoring of basic health care capability like this going forward.
Indeed.
Sorry to be a party pooper but in a pandemic is not this sort of reaction entirely foreseeable - that countries would requisition material made in their country and would override any normal commercial contracts? So did we have plans for this? If not, why not? A pandemic was identified as one of the highest risks we faced. So what the hell preparation was made?
In a few weeks we may well have shortages in basic necessities. It would be nice to think the government had a plan. But what I won’t accept is more profiteering by friends of government ministers because the latter can’t make any bloody plans for foreseeable events and then using their negligence to justify said profiteering.
Three thoughts. 1. Was there not a plan, and it was pigeon-holed? 2. I have reason to believe that, in somewhere which had big garment-,making facilities 'it was like the Wild West' with all sorts of people trying to put packages together. 3. While Ms Cyclefree thinks that it would be nice to think this government had a plan, I fear that it has, but it is described in her last sentence.
The number of refugees resettled in safe countries will hit a record low in 2020, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned, as it urged the UK government to restart its flagship programme.
This is from the Guardian, and is sad. My question is this. As the countries all these good people are fleeing are members of the UN shouldn't the focus be on why you can both be a member of the EU and have people fleeing your borders to settle in other UN countries. Isn't that the first issue to sort?
As the countries all these good people are fleeing are members of the UN EU shouldn't the focus be on why you can both be a member of the UN EU and have people fleeing your borders to settle in other UN countries. Isn't that the first issue to sort?
O the tyranny that is Belgium. They are turning up on pathetic rafts at the shores of North Korea.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
I don’t have any problem at all with the government paying over the odds for equipment needed urgently. It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis - perhaps that was another part of Project Cygnus that was ditched.
I do have a big problem with doing so in a way which appears to have facilitated some very apparently dodgy behaviour. The Bribery Act does not have a defence of “I needed to do it speedily because I was unprepared.” I also question the claim of “good faith” because of my actual knowledge of some of the people involved.
There has been a persistent response that normal due diligence would take 6 months etc so obviously would need to be ditched. This is simply not true. You can do even basic due diligence very quickly - in hours if need be. It takes minutes to put in contracts clauses allowing clawback of monies paid and yet the ineffably incompetent Helen Whately was claiming that such things did not exist.
When banks were rescued in autumn 2008 this was pretty much done over a weekend. The idea that things cannot be done well and speedily is simply not true. The idea that speed is an excuse for simply abandoning any attempt at some form of control is a nonsense.
What’s more this abandonment of any sort of good practice seems to have continued long after the initial emergency. It seems to have infested all sorts of other contracts and appointments which had nothing to do with getting equipment to doctors on the front line. It seems to be the government’s MO and this should concern us all, however much slack we may be willing to cut the government for what it necessarily had to do back in February/March.
I think that any evidence of fraud should be passed to the relevant authorities, I've been consistent in that. I also think that the lack of preparedness should be investigated thoroughly, so that everyone is ready for the next emergency.
As @Charles mentioned earlier, attempts at due diligence would have difficult back in March - many of these potential suppliers had no prior experience in the field but did know someone further along the grey-market supply chain. Most of them did indeed deliver the PPE that was paid for, even if it wasn't the best possible value for money. The NHS procurement team had little choice if they didn't want to run out of the stuff.
The difference with the bank rescue was that it was just numbers on computers and spreadsheets, rather than having to physically manufacture and distribute stuff that the whole world was looking for at the same time.
Hmm - not to cast aspersions on the lovely @Charles. But bankers always say due diligence is too difficult. I view such claims with great scepticism.
Though bankers’ failure to take it seriously is probably the single most important reason why people like me have been able to have a career. So not all bad news, I suppose. 🙂
The argument proposed earlier that middle men deserved their cut(s) because they, through often nefarious means, managed to reassign/divert legitimate consignments of PPE to destination A, to destinations B, C and D before it finally wound up in the hands of highest bidder HMG, is rather depressing.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Can we please stop battering poor Miss QUALY?
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
'QALY', though given how scientists normally abuse acronyms to get something that looks/sounds nice I am surprised it's not 'QUALY'
Re the earlier posters, you also have to consider risk. So your elderly person would would have died may have only 5-10 QALYs saved by a vaccine, compared to a teenager who would have died getting 80 from a vaccine, but that difference is easily outweighed if your elderly person is, say, 100 times more likely to die. QALYs gained from vaccinating 10 million elderly people very likely outweighs those from vaccinating 10 million young people.
Of course, there are other things to think about, such as who spreads the virus. It may be that you could get a better return in QALYs by vaccinating a group that wasn't highest risk, but most likely to spread the virus, but that's a different and much more complicated question. for which I don't think we yet have the data. A younger, more spreading group also has less personal gain from taking the vaccine, so uptake could be lower.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
No, he's not in a care home. He's in the second batch, with Big G and myself. Although as C comes before G and W, it's me, me, me first.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
None of the text of the Bible (apart from the odd word) is written in Aramaic.
Just a question, if the radio were to play a song with the word "nigger" in it from several decades ago, do people still believe this is appropriate
"Straight Outta Compton"?
That's 32 years old now, old enough to be a grandparent. Still sounds good today.
That's obviously not what I meant and you're being disingenuous by using it as an example. "Nigger" in that context is very different to the usage historically and by white people against black people.
You simply asked about the use of the 'n-word', something that's been a staple of hip-hop music since its inception. Context is irrelevant, if you're going to ask for words to be banned.
Don't start me on Dave Chappelle's latest comedy special either, there's at least a dozen 'n-words' in that.
If a white person records a song with the word "nigger" in it, you either think that's appropriate or you don't, which is it?
May I further complicate this by bringing up Bob Dylan's "Hurricane"? Which contains that word. However, it is in the context of black people using it. About another black man. Who was wrongly imprisoned, and very grateful for the support. It was, however, indisputably written by a man who isn't black. Is that OK?
What about the Randy Newman song 'Rednecks', which mocks both the racist hicks and the Liberal Elite who sneer at them while not being much better at racial equality themselves?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
I don't really see how it is possible to argue with that. The order is by what they are calling "high to low risk stratification".
And they are going to have to stick to it firmly all it will all get politicked.
On the original point, I think if you overlay "value of a life" (once you have decided who deserves how much to live), onto the risk, then the same order will emerge; the risk diifferences are orders of magnitude, and I think that term will dominate.
Equally, there's a reasonable argument that says that if n only has a few years left, then those are more valuable than the same number of years from somebody who has 10x as much life remaining.
It's an impossible conversation.
I think the only vaguely justifiable argument would be to broaden the definition of care workers to include high contact people such as bus drivers.
However, i think that we have the infrastructure in place to do the vaccinations quickly enough to make the conversation less relevant.
Though obviously our media will manufacture a humongous, divisive controversy even if one does not exist.
Here is a possible alternative argument - no idea how valid but I think it is worth modelling particularly as you get lower down that list.
If there is a 90%+ reduction in infectiousness as well as symptoms, then vaccinating the people with most social contacts (at a guess workers in food retail, health care, transportation, schools, hospitality, (politicians!)) will have a very strong iterative impact in reducing R and the number of national infections.
This may be better than vaccinating those most at risk, or more likely better than vaccinating in risk order all the way down the list.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
I went through the numbers for these a while back. My best estimates were: 1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers - 418,000 + 295,000 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers - 3,218,000 + 2,700,000 3) all those 75 years of age and over - 2,235,000 4) all those 70 years of age and over - 3,252,000 5) all those 65 years of age and over - 3,396,000 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age - 1,500,000 (estimated) 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age - COULD NOT ESTIMATE RELIABLY, probably c. 7,500,000 ?? 8) all those 60 years of age and over - 3,674,000 9) all those 55 years of age and over - 4,300,000 10) all those 50 years of age and over - 4,675,000 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
Family gatherings at Christmas will “throw fuel on the fire” of the pandemic and there is "far too much emphasis" on having a normal festive period, a Government scientific adviser has said.
Older people face “substantial risks,” said Andrew Hayward, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at University College London.
Telegraph
He is right - and why most of my family and friends here and in the UK will nt be mixing as suual this year even if it is allowed. I understand the need to allow a little relaxation but it should not be overdone and just because it may be allowed does not make it wise for many people at risk.
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
I don’t have any problem at all with the government paying over the odds for equipment needed urgently. It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis - perhaps that was another part of Project Cygnus that was ditched.
I do have a big problem with doing so in a way which appears to have facilitated some very apparently dodgy behaviour. The Bribery Act does not have a defence of “I needed to do it speedily because I was unprepared.” I also question the claim of “good faith” because of my actual knowledge of some of the people involved.
There has been a persistent response that normal due diligence would take 6 months etc so obviously would need to be ditched. This is simply not true. You can do even basic due diligence very quickly - in hours if need be. It takes minutes to put in contracts clauses allowing clawback of monies paid and yet the ineffably incompetent Helen Whately was claiming that such things did not exist.
When banks were rescued in autumn 2008 this was pretty much done over a weekend. The idea that things cannot be done well and speedily is simply not true. The idea that speed is an excuse for simply abandoning any attempt at some form of control is a nonsense.
What’s more this abandonment of any sort of good practice seems to have continued long after the initial emergency. It seems to have infested all sorts of other contracts and appointments which had nothing to do with getting equipment to doctors on the front line. It seems to be the government’s MO and this should concern us all, however much slack we may be willing to cut the government for what it necessarily had to do back in February/March.
I think that any evidence of fraud should be passed to the relevant authorities, I've been consistent in that. I also think that the lack of preparedness should be investigated thoroughly, so that everyone is ready for the next emergency.
As @Charles mentioned earlier, attempts at due diligence would have difficult back in March - many of these potential suppliers had no prior experience in the field but did know someone further along the grey-market supply chain. Most of them did indeed deliver the PPE that was paid for, even if it wasn't the best possible value for money. The NHS procurement team had little choice if they didn't want to run out of the stuff.
The difference with the bank rescue was that it was just numbers on computers and spreadsheets, rather than having to physically manufacture and distribute stuff that the whole world was looking for at the same time.
The concern was the fast track process for mates and the dodgy broker payments. One suspects cronyism and corruption.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
My favourite plot twist was the Greeks coming up with "The Holy Trinity" because "god" should be "inexplicable", then subsequent seasons tying themselves in knots trying to explain it....
In the beginning, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth. He was not represented by images and had no temple or priests in his service. He was too exalted for an inadequate human cult. Gradually he faded from the consciousness of his people. He had become so remote that they decided that they did not want him any more. Eventually he was said to have disappeared.
Father Wilhelm Schmidt in The Origin of the Idea of God, first published in 1912
"some spread with unbecoming glee" is a contemptible slur, of a kind much loved by (and expect more of this) Brexiteers; when you have to retreat from "It's a success" you go to "OK it's a failure, but the real story is how you lot are loving it being a failure because you WANT THE UK TO FAIL."
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
None of the text of the Bible (apart from the odd word) is written in Aramaic.
Was, surely. Although I believe there are Aramaic texts. Moses probably wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics, surely?
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
I don’t have any problem at all with the government paying over the odds for equipment needed urgently. It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis - perhaps that was another part of Project Cygnus that was ditched.
I do have a big problem with doing so in a way which appears to have facilitated some very apparently dodgy behaviour. The Bribery Act does not have a defence of “I needed to do it speedily because I was unprepared.” I also question the claim of “good faith” because of my actual knowledge of some of the people involved.
There has been a persistent response that normal due diligence would take 6 months etc so obviously would need to be ditched. This is simply not true. You can do even basic due diligence very quickly - in hours if need be. It takes minutes to put in contracts clauses allowing clawback of monies paid and yet the ineffably incompetent Helen Whately was claiming that such things did not exist.
When banks were rescued in autumn 2008 this was pretty much done over a weekend. The idea that things cannot be done well and speedily is simply not true. The idea that speed is an excuse for simply abandoning any attempt at some form of control is a nonsense.
What’s more this abandonment of any sort of good practice seems to have continued long after the initial emergency. It seems to have infested all sorts of other contracts and appointments which had nothing to do with getting equipment to doctors on the front line. It seems to be the government’s MO and this should concern us all, however much slack we may be willing to cut the government for what it necessarily had to do back in February/March.
I think that any evidence of fraud should be passed to the relevant authorities, I've been consistent in that. I also think that the lack of preparedness should be investigated thoroughly, so that everyone is ready for the next emergency.
As @Charles mentioned earlier, attempts at due diligence would have difficult back in March - many of these potential suppliers had no prior experience in the field but did know someone further along the grey-market supply chain. Most of them did indeed deliver the PPE that was paid for, even if it wasn't the best possible value for money. The NHS procurement team had little choice if they didn't want to run out of the stuff.
The difference with the bank rescue was that it was just numbers on computers and spreadsheets, rather than having to physically manufacture and distribute stuff that the whole world was looking for at the same time.
The concern was the fast track process for mates and the dodgy broker payments. One suspects cronyism and corruption.
If Sir Kneel Starmer makes the same tax promise that Joe Biden made he'll get in.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
But it does make you realise why the church was so resistant to the idea of freelance translators doing their own thing. It was a (heaven-sent?) opportunity to inject a personal slant on what God actually said (in Hebrew or Greek, as the case may be).
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
No, given Transport and mobile machine drivers and operatives account for 0.92% of Public Sector in Scotland and 1.49% in London.
Doesn't answer the specific question, really, does it? Is TfL counted as public sector? The railways?
Given its half a percent difference TfL's classification is unlikely to make a material difference to the big picture.
The big differences are in health (Scotland proportionately double London) and Education (Scotland just over half London) in a context where overall Scotland has nearly twice the proportion employed in the Public Sector as London (which also has pay parity between Public & Private sectors, unlike Scotland where Public Sector pay leads the Private Sector by 13%.)
Somk,e of it must be structural. Mass privatisation of E schools under Messrs Gove and Cummings? Outsourcing by Conservative councils? Different age structure of London (which tends to be sui generis)? Different levels of employment? (more gig jobs in non-public sector).
Load of my colleagues have just returned from there (Essential work trip). Compliance with any sort of Covid safety is dreadful there, they're very happy to be back.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
None of the text of the Bible (apart from the odd word) is written in Aramaic.
Was, surely. Although I believe there are Aramaic texts. Moses probably wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics, surely?
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
I don’t have any problem at all with the government paying over the odds for equipment needed urgently. It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis - perhaps that was another part of Project Cygnus that was ditched.
I do have a big problem with doing so in a way which appears to have facilitated some very apparently dodgy behaviour. The Bribery Act does not have a defence of “I needed to do it speedily because I was unprepared.” I also question the claim of “good faith” because of my actual knowledge of some of the people involved.
There has been a persistent response that normal due diligence would take 6 months etc so obviously would need to be ditched. This is simply not true. You can do even basic due diligence very quickly - in hours if need be. It takes minutes to put in contracts clauses allowing clawback of monies paid and yet the ineffably incompetent Helen Whately was claiming that such things did not exist.
When banks were rescued in autumn 2008 this was pretty much done over a weekend. The idea that things cannot be done well and speedily is simply not true. The idea that speed is an excuse for simply abandoning any attempt at some form of control is a nonsense.
What’s more this abandonment of any sort of good practice seems to have continued long after the initial emergency. It seems to have infested all sorts of other contracts and appointments which had nothing to do with getting equipment to doctors on the front line. It seems to be the government’s MO and this should concern us all, however much slack we may be willing to cut the government for what it necessarily had to do back in February/March.
I think that any evidence of fraud should be passed to the relevant authorities, I've been consistent in that. I also think that the lack of preparedness should be investigated thoroughly, so that everyone is ready for the next emergency.
As @Charles mentioned earlier, attempts at due diligence would have difficult back in March - many of these potential suppliers had no prior experience in the field but did know someone further along the grey-market supply chain. Most of them did indeed deliver the PPE that was paid for, even if it wasn't the best possible value for money. The NHS procurement team had little choice if they didn't want to run out of the stuff.
The difference with the bank rescue was that it was just numbers on computers and spreadsheets, rather than having to physically manufacture and distribute stuff that the whole world was looking for at the same time.
The concern was the fast track process for mates and the dodgy broker payments. One suspects cronyism and corruption.
That thing when you discover mate's rates are in fact 50% above the going rate.
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis.
There was. The NHS placed a huge order for masks in February, from the leading European supplier, based in France. You get one guess. One side effect of this will be a lot more on-shoring of basic health care capability like this going forward.
Indeed.
Sorry to be a party pooper but in a pandemic is not this sort of reaction entirely foreseeable - that countries would requisition material made in their country and would override any normal commercial contracts? So did we have plans for this? If not, why not? A pandemic was identified as one of the highest risks we faced. So what the hell preparation was made?
In a few weeks we may well have shortages in basic necessities. It would be nice to think the government had a plan. But what I won’t accept is more profiteering by friends of government ministers because the latter can’t make any bloody plans for foreseeable events and then using their negligence to justify said profiteering.
I'm sure there were plans but there is an old saying that "no plan survives contact with the enemy".
Adaptability is also a part of turning plans into reality.
I am much more saddened by the realisation that an EU nation would abandon solidarity in favour of naked nationalism. Who knew it was such a fake organisation?
Is this a second April's fools day or are we now really being governed by a bunch of idiots who will judge a treaty they wont read on the number of pages in it? Can't we just give them a version in font size 6?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
I went through the numbers for these a while back. My best estimates were: 1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers - 418,000 + 295,000 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers - 3,218,000 + 2,700,000 3) all those 75 years of age and over - 2,235,000 4) all those 70 years of age and over - 3,252,000 5) all those 65 years of age and over - 3,396,000 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age - 1,500,000 (estimated) 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age - COULD NOT ESTIMATE RELIABLY, probably c. 7,500,000 ?? 8) all those 60 years of age and over - 3,674,000 9) all those 55 years of age and over - 4,300,000 10) all those 50 years of age and over - 4,675,000 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
And just doing 1) would put a massive dent in the deaths and hospitalisations from COVID.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
No, he's not in a care home. He's in the second batch, with Big G and myself. Although as C comes before G and W, it's me, me, me first.
The only reason he's not in a care home is noone will have him.
How long before they get down to me, do you think? When will they start taking the Ps?
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
None of the text of the Bible (apart from the odd word) is written in Aramaic.
Was, surely. Although I believe there are Aramaic texts. Moses probably wrote in Egyptian hieroglyphics, surely?
NT was in Greek was it not?
IIRC, yes. The idea that Jesus normally spoke Greek is highly improbable. Or that John (for one) did.
Is Andrew Neil's intentional/ignorant misuse of numbers in respect to Sweden and Covid-19 more or less problematic than Diane Abbott's problems with numbers?
Which do we think will receive the most criticism and mockery for this?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
Yes, Of course I know that nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups! But it`s not all about deaths is it.
"Long Covid" concerns me as much as deaths do, and the implications of long Covid, when quantified logically, must be more extreme for, say, a 55 year old than a 85 year old. That`s obvious isn`t it?
I`m concerned that the government is scared of considering anything that goes beyond "let`s protect the old folk".
Just looking at death rates is an incomplete assessment, especially when they are in a care home with no quality of life and just waiting to die (I speak from current personal experience re my mother). The thought that she will be prioritised over, say, a 45 year old with a young family appalls me and would appall her.
The so-called "jewellery designer" was actually an "importer" and he assisted in using contacts in China to "import" goods.
"Importer paid to import goods" is such a slow news day story.
The guy from ARCO who are indeed a bone-fide legitimate CE marked PPE provider, stuff like visors, claimed yesterday that companies like ARCO were overlooked in favour of individuals with no prior experience of PPE procurement.
I am surprised you can't see that this story looks like a parody of "Only Fools and Horses".
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
Carnyx, Carlotta and Tories don't want a real comparison , they just want to bash Scotland, they prefer outsourcing so their families and chums make piles of money out of it.
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
No, given Transport and mobile machine drivers and operatives account for 0.92% of Public Sector in Scotland and 1.49% in London.
Doesn't answer the specific question, really, does it? Is TfL counted as public sector? The railways?
Given its half a percent difference TfL's classification is unlikely to make a material difference to the big picture.
The big differences are in health (Scotland proportionately double London) and Education (Scotland just over half London) in a context where overall Scotland has nearly twice the proportion employed in the Public Sector as London (which also has pay parity between Public & Private sectors, unlike Scotland where Public Sector pay leads the Private Sector by 13%.)
Somk,e of it must be structural. Mass privatisation of E schools under Messrs Gove and Cummings?
Why would that account for a lower proportion in the Public Sector in Scotland (given Scotland's about double London overall it looks on a per capita basis its about a wash)? The Health thing might be Care homes - are they mainly Public Sector in Scotland?
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
No, given Transport and mobile machine drivers and operatives account for 0.92% of Public Sector in Scotland and 1.49% in London.
Doesn't answer the specific question, really, does it? Is TfL counted as public sector? The railways?
Given its half a percent difference TfL's classification is unlikely to make a material difference to the big picture.
The big differences are in health (Scotland proportionately double London) and Education (Scotland just over half London) in a context where overall Scotland has nearly twice the proportion employed in the Public Sector as London (which also has pay parity between Public & Private sectors, unlike Scotland where Public Sector pay leads the Private Sector by 13%.)
Somk,e of it must be structural. Mass privatisation of E schools under Messrs Gove and Cummings? Outsourcing by Conservative councils? Different age structure of London (which tends to be sui generis)? Different levels of employment? (more gig jobs in non-public sector).
There was no "Mass privatisation of E schools under Messrs Gove and Cummings" - the free schools are still state schools. The name comes from the difference in the way they are managed/controlled.
The most probable explanation of the difference is that in parts of the UK, the level of activity in the private sector is lower.
Since the public sector isn't *directly* scaled according to local private sector activity, the public sector makes up a large piece of the overall employment pie.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
No, he's not in a care home. He's in the second batch, with Big G and myself. Although as C comes before G and W, it's me, me, me first.
The only reason he's not in a care home is noone will have him.
How long before they get down to me, do you think? When will they start taking the Ps?
In my Care Home Inspection days I came across a resident whom the Matron said they were going 'to ask his son to remove him.' Can't imagine Jack being accused of what he was guilty of, though.
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
The Bible? Is that series still running? And with the original cast too!
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
But it does make you realise why the church was so resistant to the idea of freelance translators doing their own thing. It was a (heaven-sent?) opportunity to inject a personal slant on what God actually said (in Hebrew or Greek, as the case may be).
I read a history of the creation of the King James Bible - it was created by Committees of Committees of competing academics - almost nothing could be more guaranteed to create a mess - and yet somehow, it produced one of the great works of English literature, divine intervention?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You ignore the fact that 18 year old is almost 100% unlikely to be impacted. Hopefully it is not your older family members that die as a result of your callous selfishness.
Oxford slow phase 3 trials, SAGE using wikipedia, the Ferguson model written in the.computer sciece equivalent of Victorian times and the shit show slides that predicted 4000 deaths a day...
I think we are going to need to have some serious conversations about the state of academia in this field. I still left scratching my head how we convinced Demis from Deepminds to show up for SAGE and we don't appear to have harnessed the fact under his control he has 100s of staff with top notch PhDs in ML / AI. Could we not have asked him to send over a few to at very least run Big Doms NASA control centre properly and double check the bollock models being pumped out.
Is Andrew Neil's intentional/ignorant misuse of numbers in respect to Sweden and Covid-19 more or less problematic than Diane Abbott's problems with numbers?
Which do we think will receive the most criticism and mockery for this?
Al of them. ALL OF THEM!
The lockdown flat with Piers Morgan, Piers Corbyn and the mad lawyer with the baseball bat will be getting crowded.
Come to think of it, the fines for having too many people there will probably pay for the whole COVID thing.
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
No, given Transport and mobile machine drivers and operatives account for 0.92% of Public Sector in Scotland and 1.49% in London.
Doesn't answer the specific question, really, does it? Is TfL counted as public sector? The railways?
Given its half a percent difference TfL's classification is unlikely to make a material difference to the big picture.
The big differences are in health (Scotland proportionately double London) and Education (Scotland just over half London) in a context where overall Scotland has nearly twice the proportion employed in the Public Sector as London (which also has pay parity between Public & Private sectors, unlike Scotland where Public Sector pay leads the Private Sector by 13%.)
Somk,e of it must be structural. Mass privatisation of E schools under Messrs Gove and Cummings?
Why would that account for a lower proportion in the Public Sector in Scotland (given Scotland's about double London overall it looks on a per capita basis its about a wash)? The Health thing might be Care homes - are they mainly Public Sector in Scotland?
I don't know on the last point. Probably more public sector homes, but there are plenty of private ones.
Is Andrew Neil's intentional/ignorant misuse of numbers in respect to Sweden and Covid-19 more or less problematic than Diane Abbott's problems with numbers?
Which do we think will receive the most criticism and mockery for this?
I think there is a trend of targeting women with accusations of innumeracy. I've seen it targeted at Abbott, Patel, and Cherry, way out of proportion of any perceived mistakes. Can't prove it of course, but I have the distinct sense of an underlying "girls can't do maffs, innit" attitude.
An intellectual ursid, that. Reminds me how I have had to explain to English colleagues writing about Scottish affairs/history that 'staunch' has a Certain Meaning and is not to be used in an inappropriate context.
Wonder who corrected the spelling for him, I doubt he would be able to spell some of those words.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Can we please stop battering poor Miss QUALY?
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
'QALY', though given how scientists normally abuse acronyms to get something that looks/sounds nice I am surprised it's not 'QUALY'
Re the earlier posters, you also have to consider risk. So your elderly person would would have died may have only 5-10 QALYs saved by a vaccine, compared to a teenager who would have died getting 80 from a vaccine, but that difference is easily outweighed if your elderly person is, say, 100 times more likely to die. QALYs gained from vaccinating 10 million elderly people very likely outweighs those from vaccinating 10 million young people.
Of course, there are other things to think about, such as who spreads the virus. It may be that you could get a better return in QALYs by vaccinating a group that wasn't highest risk, but most likely to spread the virus, but that's a different and much more complicated question. for which I don't think we yet have the data. A younger, more spreading group also has less personal gain from taking the vaccine, so uptake could be lower.
Thanks for taking my point seriously, but I`m not for a moment suggesting "vaccinating 10 million young people".
I`m suggesting that the the important people to vaccinate first may those in, say, the 50-60 age bracket rather than old people in care homes at the end of their lives. I don`t think that this should be a controversial claim.
Those in the 50 -60 age group are vulnerable to death from Covid to some extent, more relevant is their vulnerability to long-Covid which could blight them for the rest of their lives, they may have a family still to support and be the major breadwinner in the family, and have in normal circumstances many years of quality life ahead of them.
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
Carnyx, Carlotta and Tories don't want a real comparison , they just want to bash Scotland, they prefer outsourcing so their families and chums make piles of money out of it.
And a good afternoon to you too, Malc.
Just wondering how SIndy is going to keep paying for it.....
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
Yes, Of course I know that nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups! But it`s not all about deaths is it.
"Long Covid" concerns me as much as deaths do, and the implications of long Covid, when quantified logically, must be more extreme for, say, a 55 year old than a 85 year old. That`s obvious isn`t it?
I`m concerned that the government is scared of considering anything that goes beyond "let`s protect the old folk".
Just looking at death rates is an incomplete assessment, especially when they are in a care home with no quality of life and just waiting to die (I speak from current personal experience re my mother). The thought that she will be prioritised over, say, a 45 year old with a young family appalls me and would appall her.
Getting rapidly to state where the hospitals won't be overwhelmed if we don't stop doing a long list of things is the desired intermediate goal.
Is Andrew Neil's intentional/ignorant misuse of numbers in respect to Sweden and Covid-19 more or less problematic than Diane Abbott's problems with numbers?
Which do we think will receive the most criticism and mockery for this?
I think there is a trend of targeting women with accusations of innumeracy. I've seen it targeted at Abbott, Patel, and Cherry, way out of proportion of any perceived mistakes. Can't prove it of course, but I have the distinct sense of an underlying "girls can't do maffs, innit" attitude.
I'd normally scoff at that as an excuse, and Abbot certainly has plenty of examples, but it does feel as though it happens more.
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
I don’t have any problem at all with the government paying over the odds for equipment needed urgently. It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis - perhaps that was another part of Project Cygnus that was ditched.
I do have a big problem with doing so in a way which appears to have facilitated some very apparently dodgy behaviour. The Bribery Act does not have a defence of “I needed to do it speedily because I was unprepared.” I also question the claim of “good faith” because of my actual knowledge of some of the people involved.
There has been a persistent response that normal due diligence would take 6 months etc so obviously would need to be ditched. This is simply not true. You can do even basic due diligence very quickly - in hours if need be. It takes minutes to put in contracts clauses allowing clawback of monies paid and yet the ineffably incompetent Helen Whately was claiming that such things did not exist.
When banks were rescued in autumn 2008 this was pretty much done over a weekend. The idea that things cannot be done well and speedily is simply not true. The idea that speed is an excuse for simply abandoning any attempt at some form of control is a nonsense.
What’s more this abandonment of any sort of good practice seems to have continued long after the initial emergency. It seems to have infested all sorts of other contracts and appointments which had nothing to do with getting equipment to doctors on the front line. It seems to be the government’s MO and this should concern us all, however much slack we may be willing to cut the government for what it necessarily had to do back in February/March.
I think that any evidence of fraud should be passed to the relevant authorities, I've been consistent in that. I also think that the lack of preparedness should be investigated thoroughly, so that everyone is ready for the next emergency.
As @Charles mentioned earlier, attempts at due diligence would have difficult back in March - many of these potential suppliers had no prior experience in the field but did know someone further along the grey-market supply chain. Most of them did indeed deliver the PPE that was paid for, even if it wasn't the best possible value for money. The NHS procurement team had little choice if they didn't want to run out of the stuff.
The difference with the bank rescue was that it was just numbers on computers and spreadsheets, rather than having to physically manufacture and distribute stuff that the whole world was looking for at the same time.
So they just gave the contracts to friends and family as they already knew them.
FPT Prof Carl Heneghan & Tom Jefferson "Landmark Danish study shows face masks have no significant effect"
Unlike other studies looking at masks, the Danmask study was a randomised controlled trial – making it the highest quality scientific evidence.
Concludes: And now that we have properly rigorous scientific research we can rely on, the evidence shows that wearing masks in the community does not significantly reduce the rates of infection.
1) they are misstating what the study says 2) more importantly -> the idea behind masks is not primarily to protect the wearer, but to protect others from the wearer if the wearer is infectious.
The actual study says: "The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection." https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817
Correct - unwarranted hype imo.
It's almost like they've a square hypothesis that they want to ram into any round holes going.
Yup, the square hypothesis relates to how masks affect the wearer's susceptibility to infection, which misses the point about it being to protect others. More difficult to set up a randomised control trial for that though.
There's that. There's also that the study doesn't even successfully demonstrate what it claims to demonstrate.
Yep, not sure if it's been covered elsewhere, but at best it's a trial of whether it is useful to issue a supply of masks to people (and even then it only tests protection of the wearer). Many of those issued masks admit to not using them/using them as directed all the time and it's likely that some of those not issued masks may have used masks anyway, at least at times. Then you get in to potential behavioural differences between those issued and not issued with masks, those with masks maybe being less careful in other ways.
This is one of those questions where an individualised RCT is probably not the best design. You could randomise areas with mandated mask wearing or not (which would be a form of cluster randomised trial, although imperfect), but observational, particularly quasi-experimental studies are probably most useful here.
I've got to add that I've always thought quite highly of Heneghan, but this makes me revise my opinion somewhat. He should be aware of the limitations and that it's actually not even the same question people are asking, so he either has a much lower understanding of this that I would expect or appears to be being deliberately disingenuous.
Looking at the actual paper (which Henegan's article links to), it states its limitations right at the top: Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.
Reading the article, though, I entirely agree with his general point - governments, and ours in particular, ought to have committed significantly more resources to determining the efficacy of masks. A couple of well designed citywide studies might have had sufficient power to do so fairly rapidly, I think ?
Having spent the first two or three months of the pandemic decrying their use, I guess they didn't see much priority in potentially embarrassing themselves.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Can we please stop battering poor Miss QUALY?
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis.
There was. The NHS placed a huge order for masks in February, from the leading European supplier, based in France. You get one guess. One side effect of this will be a lot more on-shoring of basic health care capability like this going forward.
Indeed.
Sorry to be a party pooper but in a pandemic is not this sort of reaction entirely foreseeable - that countries would requisition material made in their country and would override any normal commercial contracts? So did we have plans for this? If not, why not? A pandemic was identified as one of the highest risks we faced. So what the hell preparation was made?
In a few weeks we may well have shortages in basic necessities. It would be nice to think the government had a plan. But what I won’t accept is more profiteering by friends of government ministers because the latter can’t make any bloody plans for foreseeable events and then using their negligence to justify said profiteering.
I'm sure there were plans but there is an old saying that "no plan survives contact with the enemy".
Adaptability is also a part of turning plans into reality.
I am much more saddened by the realisation that an EU nation would abandon solidarity in favour of naked nationalism. Who knew it was such a fake organisation?
I remember being too that in the EU, shutting borders was forbidden. Utterly.
In an alternate universe, P. Pattel announces in March that the borders are shut. Which means zero immigration. What would the reaction be?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You ignore the fact that 18 year old is almost 100% unlikely to be impacted. Hopefully it is not your older family members that die as a result of your callous selfishness.
Sorry, my original post seems to have misled. I was making a general philosophical point that a 18 year old has more value than a 80 year old - I wasn`t suggesting that we should be vaccinating 18 year olds!
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
Yes, Of course I know that nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups! But it`s not all about deaths is it.
"Long Covid" concerns me as much as deaths do, and the implications of long Covid, when quantified logically, must be more extreme for, say, a 55 year old than a 85 year old. That`s obvious isn`t it?
I`m concerned that the government is scared of considering anything that goes beyond "let`s protect the old folk".
Just looking at death rates is an incomplete assessment, especially when they are in a care home with no quality of life and just waiting to die (I speak from current personal experience re my mother). The thought that she will be prioritised over, say, a 45 year old with a young family appalls me and would appall her.
I'm sorry to hear that about your mother. She does of course have the option of refusing the vaccination, in which case it will go to someone else.
Long covid is a valid concern, but the effects are very uncertain at present. How 'long'? We don't know. How common? Again, we don't know. Some of what is reported may be symptoms of other things, rather than Covid? I'm not doubting long Covid is real, but the psychological effects of lockdown, particularly if exacerbated by being ill, could also be consistent with many of the reported symptoms (note, this does not in my view make it any less real - symptoms are symptoms, whatever the underlying cause). People are happier to look for a physical cause rather than a mental one because we neither recognise not treat mental illness very well - and they are entirely rational and reasonable in doing that.
Everyone should be offered a vaccination eventually, but I can't see the evidence for not prioritising the elderly first. If the evidence emerges, I'll change my mind.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
No, he's not in a care home. He's in the second batch, with Big G and myself. Although as C comes before G and W, it's me, me, me first.
The only reason he's not in a care home is noone will have him.
How long before they get down to me, do you think? When will they start taking the Ps?
In my Care Home Inspection days I came across a resident whom the Matron said they were going 'to ask his son to remove him.' Can't imagine Jack being accused of what he was guilty of, though.
Hilarious. I believe in Jack's case the problem is his attitude towards other residents thought to be LDs.
The so-called "jewellery designer" was actually an "importer" and he assisted in using contacts in China to "import" goods.
"Importer paid to import goods" is such a slow news day story.
The guy from ARCO who are indeed a bone-fide legitimate CE marked PPE provider, stuff like visors, claimed yesterday that companies like ARCO were overlooked in favour of individuals with no prior experience of PPE procurement.
I am surprised you can't see that this story looks like a parody of "Only Fools and Horses".
It has been said explicitly that volume was a key metric that suppliers were judged and prioritised by, quite reasonably. So far all suppliers that had offered stocks but weren't prioritised that I have seen had only offered thousands of products while the criticised and chosen suppliers were offering millions of products.
Given the volumes that were required I can well understand why suppliers offering millions were put before suppliers offering thousands, do you not understand that simple concept?
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
Yes, Of course I know that nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups! But it`s not all about deaths is it.
"Long Covid" concerns me as much as deaths do, and the implications of long Covid, when quantified logically, must be more extreme for, say, a 55 year old than a 85 year old. That`s obvious isn`t it?
I`m concerned that the government is scared of considering anything that goes beyond "let`s protect the old folk".
Just looking at death rates is an incomplete assessment, especially when they are in a care home with no quality of life and just waiting to die (I speak from current personal experience re my mother). The thought that she will be prioritised over, say, a 45 year old with a young family appalls me and would appall her.
Getting rapidly to state where the hospitals won't be overwhelmed if we don't stop doing a long list of things is the desired intermediate goal.
Is this a second April's fools day or are we now really being governed by a bunch of idiots who will judge a treaty they wont read on the number of pages in it? Can't we just give them a version in font size 6?
Great post. Its nonsensical, same as those who would reject an agreement because the EU would agree it, thus showing it must favour the EU.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You have to first define how you value a life.
For example who's life was more valuable out of a 65 year old stephen Hawking and an 18 year old drug pusher. Age or longetivity obviously aren't the only measures
Can we please stop battering poor Miss QUALY?
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
BBC have a round up of state of play across Europe with no mention of Poland. There seems a huge blind spot among the media to what clearly is a terrible situation.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
You ignore the fact that 18 year old is almost 100% unlikely to be impacted. Hopefully it is not your older family members that die as a result of your callous selfishness.
Sorry, my original post seems to have misled. I was making a general philosophical point that a 18 year old has more value than a 80 year old - I wasn`t suggesting that we should be vaccinating 18 year olds!
Stating 18 year olds are more valuable than 80 year olds is classic QUALY abuse.
It's the basic "Gotcha" that everyone who comes across the concept comes up with.
Bit like the one about all economists being sociopaths because they expect everyone to behave with perfect economic rationality and not take into account non-monetary factors.
“ Most of these products came via the grey market which has always been a murky place with long chains of multiple people taking a cut.
One I was told about the other days: US pharma sells to Turkish hospital. Hospital sells to mate down the road. Mate sells to Turkish wholesaler. Turkish is wholesaler sells to Romanian parallel importer. Romanian parallel importer sells to Dutch agent. Dutch agent sells to legitimate clinical trial supply company. Clinical trial supply company provides to big pharma company for use in a clinical trial.”
There is quite a big difference between that and Party A reaching an agreement with Party B who then says “BTW before we finalise this you need to pay Intermediary C a large amount of money because he arranged this deal” even though as far as you can tell Intermediary C’s work consists mainly of inserting himself in the middle in order to get paid.
A lot of these companies seem to be wholly unaware of the provisions of the UK’s Bribery Act, which apply not just to operations in the U.K. but overseas as well and to anyone acting on their behalf. If the SFO were not so terminally useless they’d have enough work to keep them going for years. As it is, if there has been any wrongdoing, the wrongdoers are probably safe from justice.
What was more important in the first half of this year?
1. Strict adherence to procurement practices, with extensive due diligence and only purchasing from primary sources of manufacturing?
or
2. By any means necessary, keeping healthcare professionals provided with protective equipment?
At the start of the pandemic, this was the binary choice faced by those in charge of PPE procurement. Of course mistakes will have been made, but that is the nature of a pandemic.
Of course, if there is any evidence of actual fraud this should be investigated, but the vast majority of people involved acted in good faith to an open "Does anyone know anyone anywhere who can get this stuff?" request from the NHS.
I don’t have any problem at all with the government paying over the odds for equipment needed urgently. It does raise the important question of why there appeared to be no plan for getting equipment necessary in a crisis - perhaps that was another part of Project Cygnus that was ditched.
I do have a big problem with doing so in a way which appears to have facilitated some very apparently dodgy behaviour. The Bribery Act does not have a defence of “I needed to do it speedily because I was unprepared.” I also question the claim of “good faith” because of my actual knowledge of some of the people involved.
There has been a persistent response that normal due diligence would take 6 months etc so obviously would need to be ditched. This is simply not true. You can do even basic due diligence very quickly - in hours if need be. It takes minutes to put in contracts clauses allowing clawback of monies paid and yet the ineffably incompetent Helen Whately was claiming that such things did not exist.
When banks were rescued in autumn 2008 this was pretty much done over a weekend. The idea that things cannot be done well and speedily is simply not true. The idea that speed is an excuse for simply abandoning any attempt at some form of control is a nonsense.
What’s more this abandonment of any sort of good practice seems to have continued long after the initial emergency. It seems to have infested all sorts of other contracts and appointments which had nothing to do with getting equipment to doctors on the front line. It seems to be the government’s MO and this should concern us all, however much slack we may be willing to cut the government for what it necessarily had to do back in February/March.
I think that any evidence of fraud should be passed to the relevant authorities, I've been consistent in that. I also think that the lack of preparedness should be investigated thoroughly, so that everyone is ready for the next emergency.
As @Charles mentioned earlier, attempts at due diligence would have difficult back in March - many of these potential suppliers had no prior experience in the field but did know someone further along the grey-market supply chain. Most of them did indeed deliver the PPE that was paid for, even if it wasn't the best possible value for money. The NHS procurement team had little choice if they didn't want to run out of the stuff.
The difference with the bank rescue was that it was just numbers on computers and spreadsheets, rather than having to physically manufacture and distribute stuff that the whole world was looking for at the same time.
The concern was the fast track process for mates and the dodgy broker payments. One suspects cronyism and corruption.
That thing when you discover mate's rates are in fact 50% above the going rate.
TUD, In this case it was 500% extra friend's and Family via ministerial hotline.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
No, he's not in a care home. He's in the second batch, with Big G and myself. Although as C comes before G and W, it's me, me, me first.
The only reason he's not in a care home is noone will have him.
How long before they get down to me, do you think? When will they start taking the Ps?
In my Care Home Inspection days I came across a resident whom the Matron said they were going 'to ask his son to remove him.' Can't imagine Jack being accused of what he was guilty of, though.
Hilarious. I believe in Jack's case the problem is his attitude towards other residents thought to be LDs.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
You mean JackW is first in the queue? Sorry, mate, there's something wrong here....
No, he's not in a care home. He's in the second batch, with Big G and myself. Although as C comes before G and W, it's me, me, me first.
The only reason he's not in a care home is noone will have him.
How long before they get down to me, do you think? When will they start taking the Ps?
In my Care Home Inspection days I came across a resident whom the Matron said they were going 'to ask his son to remove him.' Can't imagine Jack being accused of what he was guilty of, though.
Hilarious. I believe in Jack's case the problem is his attitude towards other residents thought to be LDs.
It was being a bit liberal with hands that was getting the chap into trouble.
Can I dip my toe in the choppy waters of "who should get the vaccine first"?
Seems to be taken as red that it should be the very oldest people first, particularly those in care homes.
"Who is most vulnerable for covid" should be a prime driver for sure. But there are other drivers surely? Can we agree that not all lives are of equal value? Controversial I know.
Seems obvious to me that a 18 year old life is of more value than a 80 year old life, and gradients in-between. If you overlaid scales of "who is most vulnerable from catching the virus" with "who has most to lose from catching the virus" the answer wouldn`t be "vaccinate old folk in care homes first".
I have my hard hat on to protect against the incoming.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers 2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers 3) all those 75 years of age and over 4) all those 70 years of age and over 5) all those 65 years of age and over 6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age 7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age 8) all those 60 years of age and over 9) all those 55 years of age and over 10) all those 50 years of age and over 11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
1-5) would be something in the order of 13-14 million people, I believe.
Nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups.
Yes, Of course I know that nearly all the deaths have been in the 1-9 groups! But it`s not all about deaths is it.
"Long Covid" concerns me as much as deaths do, and the implications of long Covid, when quantified logically, must be more extreme for, say, a 55 year old than a 85 year old. That`s obvious isn`t it?
I`m concerned that the government is scared of considering anything that goes beyond "let`s protect the old folk".
Just looking at death rates is an incomplete assessment, especially when they are in a care home with no quality of life and just waiting to die (I speak from current personal experience re my mother). The thought that she will be prioritised over, say, a 45 year old with a young family appalls me and would appall her.
I agree with where you're going. I nearly posted this yesterday but I bottled it because I thought some people might deliberately misunderstand. I think there's an element of self-selection. I think I should be a very, very low priority because I'm lucky enough to be healthy right now, I'm not terribly old, I can do my job at home, and, importantly, I'm not bouncing off the walls wanting to get out to the pub. I think this vaccine SHOULD go to people who want to go to the pub before people like me, because their freedom is more constrained than mine. Even if that means people younger, fitter, and with fewer risk factors getting it before me. I don't presume to choose for other people, but I do think there will be people more vulnerable than me who will agree that others can go first. After all, it's those who are always out and about at work or at play, who are more likely to spread it. Protecting those people in frequent contact with others protects ALL of us.
Fascinating ONS FOI request into employment in Public vs Private sector. While some of this will be down to different classifications of employment (for example, "Water" in Scotland will still count as "Public" while in England it will be "Private" there are some striking differences - GB, highest/lowest English regions and Wales/Scotland:
TfL vs the (normally profit-making) public Lothian Buses?
Carnyx, Carlotta and Tories don't want a real comparison , they just want to bash Scotland, they prefer outsourcing so their families and chums make piles of money out of it.
And a good afternoon to you too, Malc.
Just wondering how SIndy is going to keep paying for it.....
Good afternoon, We will pay for it out of the money we currently send to Westminster to squander on pretending to be world power, family free money schemes , etc.
Comments
It's an outrage - one that can only be softened by giving me money.
It's getting as bad as the way people treat Magna Carta. She never did nuffink to no-one. no how, and look what they do to her....
This is from the Guardian, and is sad. My question is this. As the countries all these good people are fleeing are members of the UN shouldn't the focus be on why you can both be a member of the UN and have people fleeing your borders to settle in other UN countries. Isn't that the first issue to sort?
They keep re-writing the bible, would you believe, to adapt parts that are old fashioned and offensive and make them more modern and accessible to future generations!
Apparently this process has been going on for centuries! When will this WOKERY ever stop?
-----
It is hard to tell who are the bigger snowflakes here, the people who object to the original lyrics being sung, or the people who object to an ongoing modernisation process that has happened with language throughout history. Both should find something better to argue about.
Do keep up.
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1329354473156829184
Emma Barnett just now on R5L...
"There is nothing wrong with pineapple on pizza."
End the licence fee! Down with this kind of thing!
And they are going to have to stick to it firmly all it will all get politicked.
On the original point, I think if you overlay "value of a life" (once you have decided who deserves how much to live), onto the risk, then the same order will emerge; the risk diifferences are orders of magnitude, and I think that term will dominate.
Equally, there's a reasonable argument that says that if n only has a few years left, then those are more valuable than the same number of years from somebody who has 10x as much life remaining.
It's an impossible conversation.
I think the only vaguely justifiable argument would be to broaden the definition of care workers to include high contact people such as bus drivers.
However, i think that we have the infrastructure in place to do the vaccinations quickly enough to make the conversation less relevant.
Though obviously our media will manufacture a humongous, divisive controversy even if one does not exist.
Adaptability is also a part of turning plans into reality.
Wasn't she supposed to be the future of broadcast journalism? Sad.
1. Was there not a plan, and it was pigeon-holed?
2. I have reason to believe that, in somewhere which had big garment-,making facilities 'it was like the Wild West' with all sorts of people trying to put packages together.
3. While Ms Cyclefree thinks that it would be nice to think this government had a plan, I fear that it has, but it is described in her last sentence.
It was never the same once they translated it from Aramaic....
Re the earlier posters, you also have to consider risk. So your elderly person would would have died may have only 5-10 QALYs saved by a vaccine, compared to a teenager who would have died getting 80 from a vaccine, but that difference is easily outweighed if your elderly person is, say, 100 times more likely to die. QALYs gained from vaccinating 10 million elderly people very likely outweighs those from vaccinating 10 million young people.
Of course, there are other things to think about, such as who spreads the virus. It may be that you could get a better return in QALYs by vaccinating a group that wasn't highest risk, but most likely to spread the virus, but that's a different and much more complicated question. for which I don't think we yet have the data. A younger, more spreading group also has less personal gain from taking the vaccine, so uptake could be lower.
"Importer paid to import goods" is such a slow news day story.
https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1327247080805568515
DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM?
If there is a 90%+ reduction in infectiousness as well as symptoms, then vaccinating the people with most social contacts (at a guess workers in food retail, health care, transportation, schools, hospitality, (politicians!)) will have a very strong iterative impact in reducing R and the number of national infections.
This may be better than vaccinating those most at risk, or more likely better than vaccinating in risk order all the way down the list.
1) older adults’ resident in a care home and care home workers - 418,000 + 295,000
2) all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers - 3,218,000 + 2,700,000
3) all those 75 years of age and over - 2,235,000
4) all those 70 years of age and over - 3,252,000
5) all those 65 years of age and over - 3,396,000
6) high-risk adults under 65 years of age - 1,500,000 (estimated)
7) moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age - COULD NOT ESTIMATE RELIABLY, probably c. 7,500,000 ??
8) all those 60 years of age and over - 3,674,000
9) all those 55 years of age and over - 4,300,000
10) all those 50 years of age and over - 4,675,000
11) rest of the population (priority to be determined)
In the beginning, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth. He was not represented by images and had no temple or priests in his service. He was too exalted for an inadequate human cult. Gradually he faded from the consciousness of his people. He had become so remote that they decided that they did not want him any more. Eventually he was said to have disappeared.
Father Wilhelm Schmidt in The Origin of the Idea of God, first published in 1912
Keep it first order, lads.
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1329380968336134145?s=19
If anyone plays that bloody Paul McCartney one, they must hang.
How long before they get down to me, do you think? When will they start taking the Ps?
Which do we think will receive the most criticism and mockery for this?
"Long Covid" concerns me as much as deaths do, and the implications of long Covid, when quantified logically, must be more extreme for, say, a 55 year old than a 85 year old. That`s obvious isn`t it?
I`m concerned that the government is scared of considering anything that goes beyond "let`s protect the old folk".
Just looking at death rates is an incomplete assessment, especially when they are in a care home with no quality of life and just waiting to die (I speak from current personal experience re my mother). The thought that she will be prioritised over, say, a 45 year old with a young family appalls me and would appall her.
I am surprised you can't see that this story looks like a parody of "Only Fools and Horses".
The most probable explanation of the difference is that in parts of the UK, the level of activity in the private sector is lower.
Since the public sector isn't *directly* scaled according to local private sector activity, the public sector makes up a large piece of the overall employment pie.
Can't imagine Jack being accused of what he was guilty of, though.
I read a history of the creation of the King James Bible - it was created by Committees of Committees of competing academics - almost nothing could be more guaranteed to create a mess - and yet somehow, it produced one of the great works of English literature, divine intervention?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8961245/SAGE-used-dodgy-data-WIKIPEDIA-model-Covid-crisis-spring-BBC-documentary-reveals.html
I think we are going to need to have some serious conversations about the state of academia in this field. I still left scratching my head how we convinced Demis from Deepminds to show up for SAGE and we don't appear to have harnessed the fact under his control he has 100s of staff with top notch PhDs in ML / AI. Could we not have asked him to send over a few to at very least run Big Doms NASA control centre properly and double check the bollock models being pumped out.
The lockdown flat with Piers Morgan, Piers Corbyn and the mad lawyer with the baseball bat will be getting crowded.
Come to think of it, the fines for having too many people there will probably pay for the whole COVID thing.
Can't prove it of course, but I have the distinct sense of an underlying "girls can't do maffs, innit" attitude.
I`m suggesting that the the important people to vaccinate first may those in, say, the 50-60 age bracket rather than old people in care homes at the end of their lives. I don`t think that this should be a controversial claim.
Those in the 50 -60 age group are vulnerable to death from Covid to some extent, more relevant is their vulnerability to long-Covid which could blight them for the rest of their lives, they may have a family still to support and be the major breadwinner in the family, and have in normal circumstances many years of quality life ahead of them.
Just wondering how SIndy is going to keep paying for it.....
Inconclusive results, missing data, variable adherence, patient-reported findings on home tests, no blinding, and no assessment of whether masks could decrease disease transmission from mask wearers to others.
Reading the article, though, I entirely agree with his general point - governments, and ours in particular, ought to have committed significantly more resources to determining the efficacy of masks.
A couple of well designed citywide studies might have had sufficient power to do so fairly rapidly, I think ?
Having spent the first two or three months of the pandemic decrying their use, I guess they didn't see much priority in potentially embarrassing themselves.
In an alternate universe, P. Pattel announces in March that the borders are shut. Which means zero immigration. What would the reaction be?
Long covid is a valid concern, but the effects are very uncertain at present. How 'long'? We don't know. How common? Again, we don't know. Some of what is reported may be symptoms of other things, rather than Covid? I'm not doubting long Covid is real, but the psychological effects of lockdown, particularly if exacerbated by being ill, could also be consistent with many of the reported symptoms (note, this does not in my view make it any less real - symptoms are symptoms, whatever the underlying cause). People are happier to look for a physical cause rather than a mental one because we neither recognise not treat mental illness very well - and they are entirely rational and reasonable in doing that.
Everyone should be offered a vaccination eventually, but I can't see the evidence for not prioritising the elderly first. If the evidence emerges, I'll change my mind.
Given the volumes that were required I can well understand why suppliers offering millions were put before suppliers offering thousands, do you not understand that simple concept?
Faggot was always a pejorative borderline swear word anyway, so it’s not a surprise it’s been edited previously, more surprising if it hadn’t
Is the coat rack over there?
It's the basic "Gotcha" that everyone who comes across the concept comes up with.
Bit like the one about all economists being sociopaths because they expect everyone to behave with perfect economic rationality and not take into account non-monetary factors.
FATHER JACK FOR POPE!
I think there's an element of self-selection. I think I should be a very, very low priority because I'm lucky enough to be healthy right now, I'm not terribly old, I can do my job at home, and, importantly, I'm not bouncing off the walls wanting to get out to the pub.
I think this vaccine SHOULD go to people who want to go to the pub before people like me, because their freedom is more constrained than mine. Even if that means people younger, fitter, and with fewer risk factors getting it before me.
I don't presume to choose for other people, but I do think there will be people more vulnerable than me who will agree that others can go first. After all, it's those who are always out and about at work or at play, who are more likely to spread it. Protecting those people in frequent contact with others protects ALL of us.