Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
I wonder what the bookies would have made of the The Hundred Years' War?
I reckon the Maid of Orléans would have led to some markets being voided
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
And don't get me started on the Hundred Years' War, nor upset TSE by telling him who won.
I'm ok with us losing the Hundred Years' War, ultimately it led to the French psyche being damaged a few hundred years later as an Old Etonian united Europe to give the French a hiding at a train station, and worst of all in the twentieth century the French were conquered and required the Brits to liberate them.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
This. Simple categories.
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
I really don't mind, as long as I get mine before JackW.
I do know that various vaccination sites are definitely being set up ready for the 1st December.
It seems to be empty warehouses, churches, and similar spacious structures.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
This. Simple categories.
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
It could be an opportunity for the treasury to claw in some much-needed tax? You can promote yourself up a couple of categories for, say, a £10k donation to the treasury???
I'd be on the dems big time for the Georgia run-offs.
The republican party is going to crack like a nut.
Like a "nut" is very apt.
Yeah well I was thinking watermelon...but that would have been more apt for the greens.....
The Trumpistas are furious with the RINOS for not fighting. That much I do know.
I wonder what the split is of his vote between trad Republican partisans and Trumpers. This is important for assessing how things will pan out over the next 4 years. My sense is that right now he has about 25m who are loyal to him and his brand. It's a lot. But I see it dwindling once he and the clan lose the trappings of the presidency. We've had peak Trump, I think.
Good question but I reckon its probably more. Trump got more votes than any pretty much any republican.
Its just that Biden also got far more votes than Obama.
The repubs could go back to a Romney/McCain type, but they just lose by more.
Looking at the numbers, the repubs don't win again. Ever.
America? One party state now.
I doubt it @contrarian, I think, if the States is going to be one party, it will be the Republicans in charge, really for several reasons:
1. Trump has, in effect, emasculated the whole Romney / McCain types in the GOP. Beyond the Trumpers, there are plenty who are unhappy with the likes of The Lincoln Project and even more who recognise that the coalition he built has real electoral legs. The end result is the Republican party is far more united than the Democrats. Biden's picks so far are centrist. While the Left does not have that many Congressional seats, it has provided a lot of the power on the ground in terms of voter activation.
2. The Democrats face significant secular problems regarding the Hispanic block, which is not just limited to Florida or southern Texas. There is a big fight brewing in California at the moment over Harris' appointment with both the Black and the Hispanic caucuses demanding their candidate be selected. If it is a Black candidate is selected, expect the Hispanic caucus to be upset. Note also immigration reform / DACA is not the slam dunk for the Democrats it was assumed;
3. Less commented on has been the 18% of Black men who (apparently) voted for Trump. Given older Black voters were unlikely to switch because of historical resonance / souls to the polls etc etc, that probably means a decent chunk of younger Black men went for Trump.
4. Higher Education enrolment is declining (mid single digits probably this year) and has been declining for a few years with stagnation before that. Given education is a defining feature of likely vote intention, that growth engine is less powerful than it was;
5. The Republicans kept state legislatures, which mean they have a big advantage going into 2022 Congressional elections. Down party election results also generally favoured them as well. That gives a big advantage.
6. Many Republicans generally believe the silver lining around the fraud claims is that procedures will be tightened for the next elections. The complaints re mail-in ballots in 2020 largely mirror those in California in 2018 when the Republicans lost a number of House seats where they had comfortable majorities on the night which were then whittled away by mail in ballots. There is a view the focus from 2018 may have acted as a deterrent for 2020. Worth noting, of the 10 seats the Republicans have picked up so far, 3 have been in California, with a fourth one possible.
I`ve been laying Trump - big - well before Covid was heard of. I was confident that Trump was toast. However, the dust having settled, I admit that I was wrong. Trump would have won if it wasn`t for Covid. My bets have come in but I was lucky.
The decisive factor was the increased use of postal voting due to Covid. I`m not for a moment suggesting fraud, just that postal voting increased the turnout and benefited the Dems deferentially. (Plus, maybe, a higher proportion of Trump voters died from Covid.)
What about future elections? It all depends on postal voting going back to previous rules. If 2020 was a one-off, and the methodology of voting returns to normal, then I expect the Republicans to bounce back next time assuming that have a half-sharp candidate. Especially if Biden become beholden to any sort of BLM or woke agenda from that wing of his party.
I hate to say it but Trump was unlucky.
Not a theory I want to accept - and I don't - but it is definitely possible. It was closer than I thought it'd be so would he have won without Covid? Maybe. Thankfully we'll never know. I don't want to think about it too much tbh. Be like dwelling on that lorry that nearly ploughed into me on the M25 that time. Technical objection though. I would not say unlucky. I'd more say that if he somehow got through his 4 years without a big, high viz crisis coming along to expose him, that would have made him a very fortunate orange-hued wannabe fascist indeed.
Thanks for responding to my post. I thought it would produce a larger response TBH. I think you are clutching at straws though.
I`ve looked back and my first lays of Trump were 22 January. Then I doubled down early Feb - all before Covid - then doubled down a few more times post-Covid. And I backed Biden and Dems on top. Overall my biggest ever exposure by a mile.
They would all have lost if it wasn`t for Covid. I don`t doubt it. Not for a second.
How close was it? It would have only taken a few thousand to have turned, say, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Or Georgia and Pennsylvania. I don`t mean few thousand more Trump votes. I mean a few thousand less Biden votes. What proportion of 2016 turnout was postal? What proportion of turnout in 2020 was postal? I don`t know these figures - but I don`t need to check. He`d have won tidily.
Dodged a bullet; makes me feel sick thinking about it.
Yes there were 5 founder members of TrumpToast and you and I were of that select band. Perhaps we were more lucky than astute. I'm not going that far - he was hated by so many - but I will allow the possibility. My bets were big too - many thousands of pounds - yet when it looked like it might be going wrong I gave that aspect very little thought. It was dwarfed by the potential political angst. I have NEVER felt so strongly about the outcome of an election. Not the EU Ref. Not any British GE. Never.
Phew.
Did you bail out at all on election night? I chopped about a third of my bets in at 2.30 am. Kicking myself now. I saw Florida coming in and became convinced that Trump would do it and panicked. That little exercise cost me over £2500. If I`d have fallen asleep on the sofa like I normally do I`d have ended up winning a lot more than I did.
That`s gambling for you: sick when you lose and sick when you win because you should have had more on
No. I felt a bit queasy after Trump's bigger than 2016 Florida and the not even close Ohio and Texas, but I was just watching, not on here, not tracking the betting, so all my bets stayed as they were on 2/11.
I'd be on the dems big time for the Georgia run-offs.
The republican party is going to crack like a nut.
Like a "nut" is very apt.
Yeah well I was thinking watermelon...but that would have been more apt for the greens.....
The Trumpistas are furious with the RINOS for not fighting. That much I do know.
I wonder what the split is of his vote between trad Republican partisans and Trumpers. This is important for assessing how things will pan out over the next 4 years. My sense is that right now he has about 25m who are loyal to him and his brand. It's a lot. But I see it dwindling once he and the clan lose the trappings of the presidency. We've had peak Trump, I think.
Good question but I reckon its probably more. Trump got more votes than any pretty much any republican.
Its just that Biden also got far more votes than Obama.
The repubs could go back to a Romney/McCain type, but they just lose by more.
Looking at the numbers, the repubs don't win again. Ever.
America? One party state now.
I doubt it @contrarian, I think, if the States is going to be one party, it will be the Republicans in charge, really for several reasons:
1. Trump has, in effect, emasculated the whole Romney / McCain types in the GOP. Beyond the Trumpers, there are plenty who are unhappy with the likes of The Lincoln Project and even more who recognise that the coalition he built has real electoral legs. The end result is the Republican party is far more united than the Democrats. Biden's picks so far are centrist. While the Left does not have that many Congressional seats, it has provided a lot of the power on the ground in terms of voter activation.
2. The Democrats face significant secular problems regarding the Hispanic block, which is not just limited to Florida or southern Texas. There is a big fight brewing in California at the moment over Harris' appointment with both the Black and the Hispanic caucuses demanding their candidate be selected. If it is a Black candidate is selected, expect the Hispanic caucus to be upset. Note also immigration reform / DACA is not the slam dunk for the Democrats it was assumed;
3. Less commented on has been the 18% of Black men who (apparently) voted for Trump. Given older Black voters were unlikely to switch because of historical resonance / souls to the polls etc etc, that probably means a decent chunk of younger Black men went for Trump.
4. Higher Education enrolment is declining (mid single digits probably this year) and has been declining for a few years with stagnation before that. Given education is a defining feature of likely vote intention, that growth engine is less powerful than it was;
5. The Republicans kept state legislatures, which mean they have a big advantage going into 2022 Congressional elections. Down party election results also generally favoured them as well. That gives a big advantage.
6. Many Republicans generally believe the silver lining around the fraud claims is that procedures will be tightened for the next elections. The complaints re mail-in ballots in 2020 largely mirror those in California in 2018 when the Republicans lost a number of House seats where they had comfortable majorities on the night which were then whittled away by mail in ballots. There is a view the focus from 2018 may have acted as a deterrent for 2020. Worth noting, of the 10 seats the Republicans have picked up so far, 3 have been in California, with a fourth one possible.
I`ve been laying Trump - big - well before Covid was heard of. I was confident that Trump was toast. However, the dust having settled, I admit that I was wrong. Trump would have won if it wasn`t for Covid. My bets have come in but I was lucky.
The decisive factor was the increased use of postal voting due to Covid. I`m not for a moment suggesting fraud, just that postal voting increased the turnout and benefited the Dems deferentially. (Plus, maybe, a higher proportion of Trump voters died from Covid.)
What about future elections? It all depends on postal voting going back to previous rules. If 2020 was a one-off, and the methodology of voting returns to normal, then I expect the Republicans to bounce back next time assuming that have a half-sharp candidate. Especially if Biden become beholden to any sort of BLM or woke agenda from that wing of his party.
I hate to say it but Trump was unlucky.
Not a theory I want to accept - and I don't - but it is definitely possible. It was closer than I thought it'd be so would he have won without Covid? Maybe. Thankfully we'll never know. I don't want to think about it too much tbh. Be like dwelling on that lorry that nearly ploughed into me on the M25 that time. Technical objection though. I would not say unlucky. I'd more say that if he somehow got through his 4 years without a big, high viz crisis coming along to expose him, that would have made him a very fortunate orange-hued wannabe fascist indeed.
Thanks for responding to my post. I thought it would produce a larger response TBH. I think you are clutching at straws though.
I`ve looked back and my first lays of Trump were 22 January. Then I doubled down early Feb - all before Covid - then doubled down a few more times post-Covid. And I backed Biden and Dems on top. Overall my biggest ever exposure by a mile.
They would all have lost if it wasn`t for Covid. I don`t doubt it. Not for a second.
How close was it? It would have only taken a few thousand to have turned, say, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Or Georgia and Pennsylvania. I don`t mean few thousand more Trump votes. I mean a few thousand less Biden votes. What proportion of 2016 turnout was postal? What proportion of turnout in 2020 was postal? I don`t know these figures - but I don`t need to check. He`d have won tidily.
Dodged a bullet; makes me feel sick thinking about it.
Yes there were 5 founder members of TrumpToast and you and I were of that select band. Perhaps we were more lucky than astute. I'm not going that far - he was hated by so many - but I will allow the possibility. My bets were big too - many thousands of pounds - yet when it looked like it might be going wrong I gave that aspect very little thought. It was dwarfed by the potential political angst. I have NEVER felt so strongly about the outcome of an election. Not the EU Ref. Not any British GE. Never.
Phew.
Did you bail out at all on election night? I chopped about a third of my bets in at 2.30 am. Kicking myself now. I saw Florida coming in and became convinced that Trump would do it and panicked. That little exercise cost me over £2500. If I`d have fallen asleep on the sofa like I normally do I`d have ended up winning a lot more than I did.
That`s gambling for you: sick when you lose and sick when you win because you should have had more on
My main, quite large bet was a simple preelection biden4potus @1.5
I have a long-standing principle of never drink and gamble. I decided to drink in the end - and conked out at 1.30-2am so I missed all the action.
I’m not too annoyed with myself for missing the 2/1+ in the fog of war, what really annoys me is missing the evens available on Biden - a few weeks before, at the height of the Hunter Biden laptop nonsense.
I should be getting paid out at evens instead of 1/2. Grrrrr
I'd be on the dems big time for the Georgia run-offs.
The republican party is going to crack like a nut.
Like a "nut" is very apt.
Yeah well I was thinking watermelon...but that would have been more apt for the greens.....
The Trumpistas are furious with the RINOS for not fighting. That much I do know.
I wonder what the split is of his vote between trad Republican partisans and Trumpers. This is important for assessing how things will pan out over the next 4 years. My sense is that right now he has about 25m who are loyal to him and his brand. It's a lot. But I see it dwindling once he and the clan lose the trappings of the presidency. We've had peak Trump, I think.
Good question but I reckon its probably more. Trump got more votes than any pretty much any republican.
Its just that Biden also got far more votes than Obama.
The repubs could go back to a Romney/McCain type, but they just lose by more.
Looking at the numbers, the repubs don't win again. Ever.
America? One party state now.
I doubt it @contrarian, I think, if the States is going to be one party, it will be the Republicans in charge, really for several reasons:
1. Trump has, in effect, emasculated the whole Romney / McCain types in the GOP. Beyond the Trumpers, there are plenty who are unhappy with the likes of The Lincoln Project and even more who recognise that the coalition he built has real electoral legs. The end result is the Republican party is far more united than the Democrats. Biden's picks so far are centrist. While the Left does not have that many Congressional seats, it has provided a lot of the power on the ground in terms of voter activation.
2. The Democrats face significant secular problems regarding the Hispanic block, which is not just limited to Florida or southern Texas. There is a big fight brewing in California at the moment over Harris' appointment with both the Black and the Hispanic caucuses demanding their candidate be selected. If it is a Black candidate is selected, expect the Hispanic caucus to be upset. Note also immigration reform / DACA is not the slam dunk for the Democrats it was assumed;
3. Less commented on has been the 18% of Black men who (apparently) voted for Trump. Given older Black voters were unlikely to switch because of historical resonance / souls to the polls etc etc, that probably means a decent chunk of younger Black men went for Trump.
4. Higher Education enrolment is declining (mid single digits probably this year) and has been declining for a few years with stagnation before that. Given education is a defining feature of likely vote intention, that growth engine is less powerful than it was;
5. The Republicans kept state legislatures, which mean they have a big advantage going into 2022 Congressional elections. Down party election results also generally favoured them as well. That gives a big advantage.
6. Many Republicans generally believe the silver lining around the fraud claims is that procedures will be tightened for the next elections. The complaints re mail-in ballots in 2020 largely mirror those in California in 2018 when the Republicans lost a number of House seats where they had comfortable majorities on the night which were then whittled away by mail in ballots. There is a view the focus from 2018 may have acted as a deterrent for 2020. Worth noting, of the 10 seats the Republicans have picked up so far, 3 have been in California, with a fourth one possible.
I`ve been laying Trump - big - well before Covid was heard of. I was confident that Trump was toast. However, the dust having settled, I admit that I was wrong. Trump would have won if it wasn`t for Covid. My bets have come in but I was lucky.
The decisive factor was the increased use of postal voting due to Covid. I`m not for a moment suggesting fraud, just that postal voting increased the turnout and benefited the Dems deferentially. (Plus, maybe, a higher proportion of Trump voters died from Covid.)
What about future elections? It all depends on postal voting going back to previous rules. If 2020 was a one-off, and the methodology of voting returns to normal, then I expect the Republicans to bounce back next time assuming that have a half-sharp candidate. Especially if Biden become beholden to any sort of BLM or woke agenda from that wing of his party.
I hate to say it but Trump was unlucky.
Not a theory I want to accept - and I don't - but it is definitely possible. It was closer than I thought it'd be so would he have won without Covid? Maybe. Thankfully we'll never know. I don't want to think about it too much tbh. Be like dwelling on that lorry that nearly ploughed into me on the M25 that time. Technical objection though. I would not say unlucky. I'd more say that if he somehow got through his 4 years without a big, high viz crisis coming along to expose him, that would have made him a very fortunate orange-hued wannabe fascist indeed.
Thanks for responding to my post. I thought it would produce a larger response TBH. I think you are clutching at straws though.
I`ve looked back and my first lays of Trump were 22 January. Then I doubled down early Feb - all before Covid - then doubled down a few more times post-Covid. And I backed Biden and Dems on top. Overall my biggest ever exposure by a mile.
They would all have lost if it wasn`t for Covid. I don`t doubt it. Not for a second.
How close was it? It would have only taken a few thousand to have turned, say, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Or Georgia and Pennsylvania. I don`t mean few thousand more Trump votes. I mean a few thousand less Biden votes. What proportion of 2016 turnout was postal? What proportion of turnout in 2020 was postal? I don`t know these figures - but I don`t need to check. He`d have won tidily.
Dodged a bullet; makes me feel sick thinking about it.
Yes there were 5 founder members of TrumpToast and you and I were of that select band. Perhaps we were more lucky than astute. I'm not going that far - he was hated by so many - but I will allow the possibility. My bets were big too - many thousands of pounds - yet when it looked like it might be going wrong I gave that aspect very little thought. It was dwarfed by the potential political angst. I have NEVER felt so strongly about the outcome of an election. Not the EU Ref. Not any British GE. Never.
Phew.
Did you bail out at all on election night? I chopped about a third of my bets in at 2.30 am. Kicking myself now. I saw Florida coming in and became convinced that Trump would do it and panicked. That little exercise cost me over £2500. If I`d have fallen asleep on the sofa like I normally do I`d have ended up winning a lot more than I did.
That`s gambling for you: sick when you lose and sick when you win because you should have had more on
No. I felt a bit queasy after Trump's bigger than 2016 Florida and the not even close Ohio and Texas, but I was just watching, not on here, not tracking the betting, so all my bets stayed as they were on 2/11.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
This. Simple categories.
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
The pressure is off, a bit, because so many people are not fussed either way, or def not going to have it. So no sci fi dystopia with people competing as if jabs were tickets on the last space ship to leave earth.
HMQ is so unbelievably old that I can't see how you ever demonstrate safety for her, I would guess they may go for a regime of perpetual distancing and vaccinating the arse off anyone who gets within a Michael Fagan length of her rather than jabbing her.
Another way of looking at the “Trump was unlucky” thing.
He had a massive advantage as a giveaway populist with an enabling Trumptonite senate, and blew everything by deliberately being a) a divisive moron and b) a covid denialist.
Rather than unlucky, he had everything going for him, and was master of his own downfall.
I thought he’d win.
I was wrong.
If he'd tweeted only half as much he'd have won narrowly and if someone had locked him out of twitter for the duration of the campaign he'd have won by the same margin as Biden has won by.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
This. Simple categories.
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
The pandemic will be over hospital wise by then too.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
This. Simple categories.
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
The pressure is off, a bit, because so many people are not fussed either way,.
Since I suspect it will be a prerequisite of international travel I don't agree.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
The AZ trial has tested for it so we'll see what the results are for that.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
This. Simple categories.
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
The pressure is off, a bit, because so many people are not fussed either way,.
Since I suspect it will be a prerequisite of international travel I don't agree.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
I really don't mind, as long as I get mine before JackW.
I've already had the Russian vaccine Comrade Peter and it's had absolut no vodka effect on me ....
I'd be on the dems big time for the Georgia run-offs.
The republican party is going to crack like a nut.
Like a "nut" is very apt.
Yeah well I was thinking watermelon...but that would have been more apt for the greens.....
The Trumpistas are furious with the RINOS for not fighting. That much I do know.
I wonder what the split is of his vote between trad Republican partisans and Trumpers. This is important for assessing how things will pan out over the next 4 years. My sense is that right now he has about 25m who are loyal to him and his brand. It's a lot. But I see it dwindling once he and the clan lose the trappings of the presidency. We've had peak Trump, I think.
Good question but I reckon its probably more. Trump got more votes than any pretty much any republican.
Its just that Biden also got far more votes than Obama.
The repubs could go back to a Romney/McCain type, but they just lose by more.
Looking at the numbers, the repubs don't win again. Ever.
America? One party state now.
I doubt it @contrarian, I think, if the States is going to be one party, it will be the Republicans in charge, really for several reasons:
1. Trump has, in effect, emasculated the whole Romney / McCain types in the GOP. Beyond the Trumpers, there are plenty who are unhappy with the likes of The Lincoln Project and even more who recognise that the coalition he built has real electoral legs. The end result is the Republican party is far more united than the Democrats. Biden's picks so far are centrist. While the Left does not have that many Congressional seats, it has provided a lot of the power on the ground in terms of voter activation.
2. The Democrats face significant secular problems regarding the Hispanic block, which is not just limited to Florida or southern Texas. There is a big fight brewing in California at the moment over Harris' appointment with both the Black and the Hispanic caucuses demanding their candidate be selected. If it is a Black candidate is selected, expect the Hispanic caucus to be upset. Note also immigration reform / DACA is not the slam dunk for the Democrats it was assumed;
3. Less commented on has been the 18% of Black men who (apparently) voted for Trump. Given older Black voters were unlikely to switch because of historical resonance / souls to the polls etc etc, that probably means a decent chunk of younger Black men went for Trump.
4. Higher Education enrolment is declining (mid single digits probably this year) and has been declining for a few years with stagnation before that. Given education is a defining feature of likely vote intention, that growth engine is less powerful than it was;
5. The Republicans kept state legislatures, which mean they have a big advantage going into 2022 Congressional elections. Down party election results also generally favoured them as well. That gives a big advantage.
6. Many Republicans generally believe the silver lining around the fraud claims is that procedures will be tightened for the next elections. The complaints re mail-in ballots in 2020 largely mirror those in California in 2018 when the Republicans lost a number of House seats where they had comfortable majorities on the night which were then whittled away by mail in ballots. There is a view the focus from 2018 may have acted as a deterrent for 2020. Worth noting, of the 10 seats the Republicans have picked up so far, 3 have been in California, with a fourth one possible.
I`ve been laying Trump - big - well before Covid was heard of. I was confident that Trump was toast. However, the dust having settled, I admit that I was wrong. Trump would have won if it wasn`t for Covid. My bets have come in but I was lucky.
The decisive factor was the increased use of postal voting due to Covid. I`m not for a moment suggesting fraud, just that postal voting increased the turnout and benefited the Dems deferentially. (Plus, maybe, a higher proportion of Trump voters died from Covid.)
What about future elections? It all depends on postal voting going back to previous rules. If 2020 was a one-off, and the methodology of voting returns to normal, then I expect the Republicans to bounce back next time assuming that have a half-sharp candidate. Especially if Biden become beholden to any sort of BLM or woke agenda from that wing of his party.
I hate to say it but Trump was unlucky.
Not a theory I want to accept - and I don't - but it is definitely possible. It was closer than I thought it'd be so would he have won without Covid? Maybe. Thankfully we'll never know. I don't want to think about it too much tbh. Be like dwelling on that lorry that nearly ploughed into me on the M25 that time. Technical objection though. I would not say unlucky. I'd more say that if he somehow got through his 4 years without a big, high viz crisis coming along to expose him, that would have made him a very fortunate orange-hued wannabe fascist indeed.
Thanks for responding to my post. I thought it would produce a larger response TBH. I think you are clutching at straws though.
I`ve looked back and my first lays of Trump were 22 January. Then I doubled down early Feb - all before Covid - then doubled down a few more times post-Covid. And I backed Biden and Dems on top. Overall my biggest ever exposure by a mile.
They would all have lost if it wasn`t for Covid. I don`t doubt it. Not for a second.
How close was it? It would have only taken a few thousand to have turned, say, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Or Georgia and Pennsylvania. I don`t mean few thousand more Trump votes. I mean a few thousand less Biden votes. What proportion of 2016 turnout was postal? What proportion of turnout in 2020 was postal? I don`t know these figures - but I don`t need to check. He`d have won tidily.
Dodged a bullet; makes me feel sick thinking about it.
Yes there were 5 founder members of TrumpToast and you and I were of that select band. Perhaps we were more lucky than astute. I'm not going that far - he was hated by so many - but I will allow the possibility. My bets were big too - many thousands of pounds - yet when it looked like it might be going wrong I gave that aspect very little thought. It was dwarfed by the potential political angst. I have NEVER felt so strongly about the outcome of an election. Not the EU Ref. Not any British GE. Never.
Phew.
Did you bail out at all on election night? I chopped about a third of my bets in at 2.30 am. Kicking myself now. I saw Florida coming in and became convinced that Trump would do it and panicked. That little exercise cost me over £2500. If I`d have fallen asleep on the sofa like I normally do I`d have ended up winning a lot more than I did.
That`s gambling for you: sick when you lose and sick when you win because you should have had more on
My main, quite large bet was a simple preelection biden4potus @1.5
I have a long-standing principle of never drink and gamble. I decided to drink in the end - and conked out at 1.30-2am so I missed all the action.
I’m not too annoyed with myself for missing the 2/1+ in the fog of war, what really annoys me is missing the evens available on Biden - a few weeks before, at the height of the Hunter Biden laptop nonsense.
I should be getting paid out at evens instead of 1/2. Grrrrr
My earlier Biden bets attracted 2.42. Overall I average 1.76 on Biden.
I also had a trad bookie bet on Biden at 14/1 but only £25 (Paddy Power).
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Knocking out the viruses ability to strike care homes is the best offensive and defensive use of the vaccine. Quick and efficient to deploy (centralised locations hit everyone at once) plus they are then protected and it is a superspreader hotspot eliminated.
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
I really don't mind, as long as I get mine before JackW.
I've already had the Russian vaccine Comrade Peter and it's had absolut no vodka effect on me ....
Pozdravlyayu, tovarishch! And a nice cup of polonium tea with it, one trusts?
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Knocking out the viruses ability to strike care homes is the best offensive and defensive use of the vaccine. Quick and efficient to deploy (centralised locations hit everyone at once) plus they are then protected and it is a superspreader hotspot eliminated.
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
Yes, you do that by vaccinating care home staff and NHS staff who interact with them on a daily basis.
While we have limited supply and capacity the vaccine needs to be used to bring down the R value as quickly as possible, that's what saves most lives and livelihoods and allows life to get back to normal for a majority of people. Once those most likely to spread it are vaccinated they government can use whatever list they want.
I wouldn't be surprised if banking, tech and other big industries bought private supply of the Moderna vaccine from February when it becomes available outside of the US, we could get to April with a significant proportion of workers already vaccinated privately through company schemes.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Knocking out the viruses ability to strike care homes is the best offensive and defensive use of the vaccine. Quick and efficient to deploy (centralised locations hit everyone at once) plus they are then protected and it is a superspreader hotspot eliminated.
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
Yes, you do that by vaccinating care home staff and NHS staff who interact with them on a daily basis.
While we have limited supply and capacity the vaccine needs to be used to bring down the R value as quickly as possible, that's what saves most lives and livelihoods and allows life to get back to normal for a majority of people. Once those most likely to spread it are vaccinated they government can use whatever list they want.
I wouldn't be surprised if banking, tech and other big industries bought private supply of the Moderna vaccine from February when it becomes available outside of the US, we could get to April with a significant proportion of workers already vaccinated privately through company schemes.
As may also happen with many schools. There are academy chains that pay for flu vaccines. To buy vaccine privately would be cheaper than having 20% of staff off isolating.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
I really don't mind, as long as I get mine before JackW.
I've already had the Russian vaccine Comrade Peter and it's had absolut no vodka effect on me ....
Pozdravlyayu, tovarishch! And a nice cup of polonium tea with it, one trusts?
With Lidl’s own, you just don’t know what they Putin.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
And don't get me started on the Hundred Years' War, nor upset TSE by telling him who won.
I'm ok with us losing the Hundred Years' War, ultimately it led to the French psyche being damaged a few hundred years later as an Old Etonian united Europe to give the French a hiding at a train station, and worst of all in the twentieth century the French were conquered and required the Brits to liberate them.
France liberated herself. Here is 40 seconds of Charles de Gaulle saying so at the liberation of Paris, and he should know. I'm sure he would have mentioned the Americans, Britons, Canadians and other Commonwealth and allied forces if they'd been in any way involved.
I'd be on the dems big time for the Georgia run-offs.
The republican party is going to crack like a nut.
Like a "nut" is very apt.
Yeah well I was thinking watermelon...but that would have been more apt for the greens.....
The Trumpistas are furious with the RINOS for not fighting. That much I do know.
I wonder what the split is of his vote between trad Republican partisans and Trumpers. This is important for assessing how things will pan out over the next 4 years. My sense is that right now he has about 25m who are loyal to him and his brand. It's a lot. But I see it dwindling once he and the clan lose the trappings of the presidency. We've had peak Trump, I think.
Good question but I reckon its probably more. Trump got more votes than any pretty much any republican.
Its just that Biden also got far more votes than Obama.
The repubs could go back to a Romney/McCain type, but they just lose by more.
Looking at the numbers, the repubs don't win again. Ever.
America? One party state now.
I doubt it @contrarian, I think, if the States is going to be one party, it will be the Republicans in charge, really for several reasons:
1. Trump has, in effect, emasculated the whole Romney / McCain types in the GOP. Beyond the Trumpers, there are plenty who are unhappy with the likes of The Lincoln Project and even more who recognise that the coalition he built has real electoral legs. The end result is the Republican party is far more united than the Democrats. Biden's picks so far are centrist. While the Left does not have that many Congressional seats, it has provided a lot of the power on the ground in terms of voter activation.
2. The Democrats face significant secular problems regarding the Hispanic block, which is not just limited to Florida or southern Texas. There is a big fight brewing in California at the moment over Harris' appointment with both the Black and the Hispanic caucuses demanding their candidate be selected. If it is a Black candidate is selected, expect the Hispanic caucus to be upset. Note also immigration reform / DACA is not the slam dunk for the Democrats it was assumed;
3. Less commented on has been the 18% of Black men who (apparently) voted for Trump. Given older Black voters were unlikely to switch because of historical resonance / souls to the polls etc etc, that probably means a decent chunk of younger Black men went for Trump.
4. Higher Education enrolment is declining (mid single digits probably this year) and has been declining for a few years with stagnation before that. Given education is a defining feature of likely vote intention, that growth engine is less powerful than it was;
5. The Republicans kept state legislatures, which mean they have a big advantage going into 2022 Congressional elections. Down party election results also generally favoured them as well. That gives a big advantage.
6. Many Republicans generally believe the silver lining around the fraud claims is that procedures will be tightened for the next elections. The complaints re mail-in ballots in 2020 largely mirror those in California in 2018 when the Republicans lost a number of House seats where they had comfortable majorities on the night which were then whittled away by mail in ballots. There is a view the focus from 2018 may have acted as a deterrent for 2020. Worth noting, of the 10 seats the Republicans have picked up so far, 3 have been in California, with a fourth one possible.
I`ve been laying Trump - big - well before Covid was heard of. I was confident that Trump was toast. However, the dust having settled, I admit that I was wrong. Trump would have won if it wasn`t for Covid. My bets have come in but I was lucky.
The decisive factor was the increased use of postal voting due to Covid. I`m not for a moment suggesting fraud, just that postal voting increased the turnout and benefited the Dems deferentially. (Plus, maybe, a higher proportion of Trump voters died from Covid.)
What about future elections? It all depends on postal voting going back to previous rules. If 2020 was a one-off, and the methodology of voting returns to normal, then I expect the Republicans to bounce back next time assuming that have a half-sharp candidate. Especially if Biden become beholden to any sort of BLM or woke agenda from that wing of his party.
I hate to say it but Trump was unlucky.
Not a theory I want to accept - and I don't - but it is definitely possible. It was closer than I thought it'd be so would he have won without Covid? Maybe. Thankfully we'll never know. I don't want to think about it too much tbh. Be like dwelling on that lorry that nearly ploughed into me on the M25 that time. Technical objection though. I would not say unlucky. I'd more say that if he somehow got through his 4 years without a big, high viz crisis coming along to expose him, that would have made him a very fortunate orange-hued wannabe fascist indeed.
Thanks for responding to my post. I thought it would produce a larger response TBH. I think you are clutching at straws though.
I`ve looked back and my first lays of Trump were 22 January. Then I doubled down early Feb - all before Covid - then doubled down a few more times post-Covid. And I backed Biden and Dems on top. Overall my biggest ever exposure by a mile.
They would all have lost if it wasn`t for Covid. I don`t doubt it. Not for a second.
How close was it? It would have only taken a few thousand to have turned, say, Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Or Georgia and Pennsylvania. I don`t mean few thousand more Trump votes. I mean a few thousand less Biden votes. What proportion of 2016 turnout was postal? What proportion of turnout in 2020 was postal? I don`t know these figures - but I don`t need to check. He`d have won tidily.
Dodged a bullet; makes me feel sick thinking about it.
Yes there were 5 founder members of TrumpToast and you and I were of that select band. Perhaps we were more lucky than astute. I'm not going that far - he was hated by so many - but I will allow the possibility. My bets were big too - many thousands of pounds - yet when it looked like it might be going wrong I gave that aspect very little thought. It was dwarfed by the potential political angst. I have NEVER felt so strongly about the outcome of an election. Not the EU Ref. Not any British GE. Never.
Phew.
Did you bail out at all on election night? I chopped about a third of my bets in at 2.30 am. Kicking myself now. I saw Florida coming in and became convinced that Trump would do it and panicked. That little exercise cost me over £2500. If I`d have fallen asleep on the sofa like I normally do I`d have ended up winning a lot more than I did.
That`s gambling for you: sick when you lose and sick when you win because you should have had more on
No. I felt a bit queasy after Trump's bigger than 2016 Florida and the not even close Ohio and Texas, but I was just watching, not on here, not tracking the betting, so all my bets stayed as they were on 2/11.
I guess your Florida bet protected you somewhat.
Yes that was my biggest single contra bet. My Mothership was a buy of Biden EC supremacy at 28 and I hedged around that in various ways on the exchange and with SPIN. I'd also been laying Trump outright on Betfair for ages but I cashed that out when the spreads opened and I could get the supremacy bet on.
People from Lancashire are bloody weird. Must have some Welsh blood in them.
A ‘SORDID’ father-of-two who would creep into a poultry farm at night to have sex with chickens used to apologise to the animals afterwards.
Shane Waters, who has previously been convicted of having sex with a horse and a donkey, admitted in his police interview that he could not control his ‘urges’ when it came to sexual intercourse with animals.
Burnley Crown Court also heard that the 40-year-old admitted to having sex with his own dog, a Great Dane, despite the fact she would bite him while he was doing so.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
And don't get me started on the Hundred Years' War, nor upset TSE by telling him who won.
I'm ok with us losing the Hundred Years' War, ultimately it led to the French psyche being damaged a few hundred years later as an Old Etonian united Europe to give the French a hiding at a train station, and worst of all in the twentieth century the French were conquered and required the Brits to liberate them.
France liberated herself. Here is 40 seconds of Charles de Gaulle saying so at the liberation of Paris, and he should know. I'm sure he would have mentioned the Americans, Britons, Canadians and other Commonwealth and allied forces if they'd been in any way involved.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Knocking out the viruses ability to strike care homes is the best offensive and defensive use of the vaccine. Quick and efficient to deploy (centralised locations hit everyone at once) plus they are then protected and it is a superspreader hotspot eliminated.
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
Yes, you do that by vaccinating care home staff and NHS staff who interact with them on a daily basis.
While we have limited supply and capacity the vaccine needs to be used to bring down the R value as quickly as possible, that's what saves most lives and livelihoods and allows life to get back to normal for a majority of people. Once those most likely to spread it are vaccinated they government can use whatever list they want.
I wouldn't be surprised if banking, tech and other big industries bought private supply of the Moderna vaccine from February when it becomes available outside of the US, we could get to April with a significant proportion of workers already vaccinated privately through company schemes.
Yes that's what I said a couple of pages ago.
Care home staff are literally the first group to get it.
NHS staff are literally the second group to get it.
So what you want to happen is happening.
The priority is not to get R down. R is inconsequential when we have a vaccine. R is only relevant because we are trying to get hospitalisations down and the only method of getting hospitalisations down is to get R down. Once we are capable of largely eliminating the risk of hospitalisations for the vulnerable then it won't matter as much if R goes up again. It will go down naturally due to a higher proportion of people being immune but if it goes wild through a university that will be pretty inconsequential and meaningless.
Vaccinating the vulnerable gets hospitalisations down an order of magnitude faster than getting R down does. I'd rather have a higher R but lower hospitalisations than the other way around.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
Mrs Jack W has expressed approval of my winning positions on POTUS 2020.
My only significant loss was on a NC Biden win. My 160M turnout will be a near miss but significantly offset by other turnout wins. Overall a quite splendid return and I will be making an appropriate donation to the Distressed PB Feather Boa Wearers and Organ Fund (Crossdresser Section)
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
And don't get me started on the Hundred Years' War, nor upset TSE by telling him who won.
I'm ok with us losing the Hundred Years' War, ultimately it led to the French psyche being damaged a few hundred years later as an Old Etonian united Europe to give the French a hiding at a train station, and worst of all in the twentieth century the French were conquered and required the Brits to liberate them.
France liberated herself. Here is 40 seconds of Charles de Gaulle saying so at the liberation of Paris, and he should know. I'm sure he would have mentioned the Americans, Britons, Canadians and other Commonwealth and allied forces if they'd been in any way involved.
Deeply shameful, many of the 'French' soldiers who liberated Paris were actually Spanish thanks to the racism of America and the UK's approval of racism.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I agree with this. But on the mitigating front I do think that university students should probably not return in January, perhaps not until after Easter, since long COVID is (at least) non-negligible.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Knocking out the viruses ability to strike care homes is the best offensive and defensive use of the vaccine. Quick and efficient to deploy (centralised locations hit everyone at once) plus they are then protected and it is a superspreader hotspot eliminated.
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
@MaxPB is right but we can combine this with Care Homes and Hospitals by taking the logistically simplest route and vaccinating target rich environments: schools as well as care homes; universities as well as hospitals; then factories, bus garages and so on.
Everyone else can be tackled using the flu jab model where the patient opts in and walks to the surgery, pharmacy or caravan in a car park. It is harder and therefore less sensible to worry about age groups in the community. If people are effectively housebound, they are probably not going to catch anything anyway and can be mopped up later, rather than prioritising house calls simply because they are old.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I am not talking about vaccines, but their schools policy, such as it is. I am talking about their flat refusal to consider rota systems, longer breaks or changes to the exam system beyond mild tinkering so they can have a Mail headline of ‘schools open as usual.’ It is not fucking usual when I open my emails to find more than a fifth of the children I am meant to be teaching are off, randomly and without warning, so I have no time to send through suitable work.
It is causing chaos and damage, and there are ways of making it easier that are being rejected out of hand because nobody in this government of crooks and retards, including their civil servants, have the courage or imagination to deal with it.
If they want schools open on their terms, they need to be vaccinating like yesterday. If they don’t vaccinate, they can’t have that.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I agree with this. But on the mitigating front I do think that university students should probably not return in January, perhaps not until after Easter, since long COVID is (at least) non-negligible.
--AS
Certainly for us there is revision then the exam period (online) then the inter semester break, so they are not back until feb in reality. The picture of Covid wil be much changed by then. If the vaccines stop the oldies dying, the mood music changes rapidly.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I am not talking about vaccines, but their schools policy, such as it is. I am talking about their flat refusal to consider rota systems, longer breaks or changes to the exam system beyond mild tinkering so they can have a Mail headline of ‘schools open as usual.’ It is not fucking usual when I open my emails to find more than a fifth of the children I am meant to be teaching are off, randomly and without warning, so I have no time to send rough suitable work.
It is causing chaos and damage, and there are ways of making it easier that are being rejected out of hand because nobody in this government of crooks and retards, including their civil servants, have the courage or imagination to deal with it.
If they want schools open on their terms, they need to be vaccinating like yesterday. If they don’t vaccinate, they can’t have that.
Fair enough, and individual school should clearly be able to make their own choices. You have my sympathy - it can’t be easy right now.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I am not talking about vaccines, but their schools policy, such as it is. I am talking about their flat refusal to consider rota systems, longer breaks or changes to the exam system beyond mild tinkering so they can have a Mail headline of ‘schools open as usual.’ It is not fucking usual when I open my emails to find more than a fifth of the children I am meant to be teaching are off, randomly and without warning, so I have no time to send rough suitable work.
It is causing chaos and damage, and there are ways of making it easier that are being rejected out of hand because nobody in this government of crooks and retards, including their civil servants, have the courage or imagination to deal with it.
If they want schools open on their terms, they need to be vaccinating like yesterday. If they don’t vaccinate, they can’t have that.
Fair enough, and individual school should clearly be able to make their own choices. You my sympathy - it can’t be easy right now.
We should, you’re right. But one trust chain that decided to give up the unequal struggle and close early was ordered to ‘think again’ by the DfE among a lot of mindless abuse in anonymous briefings.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
And don't get me started on the Hundred Years' War, nor upset TSE by telling him who won.
I'm ok with us losing the Hundred Years' War, ultimately it led to the French psyche being damaged a few hundred years later as an Old Etonian united Europe to give the French a hiding at a train station, and worst of all in the twentieth century the French were conquered and required the Brits to liberate them.
France liberated herself. Here is 40 seconds of Charles de Gaulle saying so at the liberation of Paris, and he should know. I'm sure he would have mentioned the Americans, Britons, Canadians and other Commonwealth and allied forces if they'd been in any way involved.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Knocking out the viruses ability to strike care homes is the best offensive and defensive use of the vaccine. Quick and efficient to deploy (centralised locations hit everyone at once) plus they are then protected and it is a superspreader hotspot eliminated.
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
Yes, you do that by vaccinating care home staff and NHS staff who interact with them on a daily basis.
While we have limited supply and capacity the vaccine needs to be used to bring down the R value as quickly as possible, that's what saves most lives and livelihoods and allows life to get back to normal for a majority of people. Once those most likely to spread it are vaccinated they government can use whatever list they want.
I wouldn't be surprised if banking, tech and other big industries bought private supply of the Moderna vaccine from February when it becomes available outside of the US, we could get to April with a significant proportion of workers already vaccinated privately through company schemes.
As may also happen with many schools. There are academy chains that pay for flu vaccines. To buy vaccine privately would be cheaper than having 20% of staff off isolating.
Covid aside, I find the notion that schools funded by the state are operated as "chains" with CEOs paying themselves and their management teams significant salaries is profoundly depressing. Particularly disturbing are "chains" like Oasis Community Learning and The Kemnal Academy Trust, that are ranked by Ofsted as requiring improvement. Pah!
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I agree with this. But on the mitigating front I do think that university students should probably not return in January, perhaps not until after Easter, since long COVID is (at least) non-negligible.
--AS
Certainly for us there is revision then the exam period (online) then the inter semester break, so they are not back until feb in reality. The picture of Covid wil be much changed by then. If the vaccines stop the oldies dying, the mood music changes rapidly.
Interesting. A Feb restart does help. Many of my international students are staying put here for the whole of Christmas, not going home at all. I feel very sorry for them and hope they aren't too lonely.
I don't know how the mood music would be if the oldies aren't dying so much, but those (mainly men, mainly non-white) in their 40s and 50s are still filling ICU. We may well find out. I do think the transition from now to mostly-vaccinated is going to have some sticky moments.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
And don't get me started on the Hundred Years' War, nor upset TSE by telling him who won.
I'm ok with us losing the Hundred Years' War, ultimately it led to the French psyche being damaged a few hundred years later as an Old Etonian united Europe to give the French a hiding at a train station, and worst of all in the twentieth century the French were conquered and required the Brits to liberate them.
France liberated herself. Here is 40 seconds of Charles de Gaulle saying so at the liberation of Paris, and he should know. I'm sure he would have mentioned the Americans, Britons, Canadians and other Commonwealth and allied forces if they'd been in any way involved.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Agreed, especially as schools and universities by their very nature have been the main vector of transmission in this wave and yet the government are pig-headedly refusing to consider any flexibility to mitigate it.
I think this is unfair. The decisions about the vaccination order have been reached by committee of experts, not the government. While there are clearly other approaches that could be taken, The approach of vaccinating the cohort that accounts for 90 % of the deaths (and also the burden on the nhs) makes a lot of sense. If done swiftly enough the impact could be being felt in January.
I agree with this. But on the mitigating front I do think that university students should probably not return in January, perhaps not until after Easter, since long COVID is (at least) non-negligible.
--AS
Certainly for us there is revision then the exam period (online) then the inter semester break, so they are not back until feb in reality. The picture of Covid wil be much changed by then. If the vaccines stop the oldies dying, the mood music changes rapidly.
Interesting. A Feb restart does help. Many of my international students are staying put here for the whole of Christmas, not going home at all. I feel very sorry for them and hope they aren't too lonely.
I don't know how the mood music would be if the oldies aren't dying so much, but those (mainly men, mainly non-white) in their 40s and 50s are still filling ICU. We may well find out. I do think the transition from now to mostly-vaccinated is going to have some sticky moments.
--AS
My chemistry final year projects currently get either 4 or 6 hours a week. I’m hopeful by semester 2 that there may be scope for more. Chemistry is not easy on a strict timetable...
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
Indeed. Vaccinating care homes alone will eliminate almost overnight about a quarter of hospitalisations and deaths. There's a bloody good reason that's priority number one.
The next priority is frontline NHS staff (as superspreaders to the vulnerable) and the most vulnerable. Quite right too.
Once those two groups are done, we will likely get rapidly back to where we were in July and August. Yes the virus is real still but we can kind of get back to normalish already. The risk of ICU overflowing will be over already.
Trump stood in front of the White House. It was early January, and the White House Christmas tree was about to be disposed of. For Trump is was meant to be a low-key press event, a photo op in his last two weeks as President. The woodchipper is roaring. Trump is standing close, ready to ceremonially feed the first branch into its whirling, gnashing hopper. Trump's long red tie flapped around in the tail end of the January storm that had brought snow to parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Trump then stepped to his side, and dropped the branch in. As he spoke, his words were drowned out by the grinding wood and a strong gust of wind. His tie flicked him in the face causing him to recoil, and he thrust out an arm to steady himself. At the same time, on the lawn, a bank of photographers clicked greedily at the scene: a lame-duck President being buffeted by the weather and whose words were at last obscured by nature and machine. They were looking for a metaphor befitting the last days of a chaotic, self-defeating presidency. One more illustration of incompetence and hubris. One last front page. One final Trump splash.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
Except that testing and vaccines serve two completely different purposes!
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
I used to go camping in the islands with that stuff and get the rest locally - the hard core packed at the beginning being muesli, oatcakes, cheese, corned beef, Smash and instant coffee ... oen never knew what was available locally in places like Rum.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
I really don't mind, as long as I get mine before JackW.
I've already had the Russian vaccine Comrade Peter and it's had absolut no vodka effect on me ....
I’d be a bit cautious about the Comrade in modern Russia, Mr W. In a public place, anyway. Even in UK I keep my copy of the Morning Star under my coat.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
Indeed. Vaccinating care homes alone will eliminate almost overnight about a quarter of hospitalisations and deaths. There's a bloody good reason that's priority number one.
The next priority is frontline NHS staff (as superspreaders to the vulnerable) and the most vulnerable. Quite right too.
Once those two groups are done, we will likely get rapidly back to where we were in July and August. Yes the virus is real still but we can kind of get back to normalish already. The risk of ICU overflowing will be over already.
As always this is great news for saving the NHS and bringing the fatality statistics down. However, I am of an age (too young for early wave vaccination, too old to be exempted by Covid-19) where I would still prefer to avoid Coronavirus in order to avoid being a number inside the deaths from Covid statistics.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
I wonder what the bookies would have made of the The Hundred Years' War?
I reckon the Maid of Orléans would have led to some markets being voided
You'd have been rightfully outraged if you had a tenner on Next Head of French Army as "an illiterate 17 yo peasant girl prone to hallucinations." Million to one at least.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
Stopping the old from dying makes COVID background noise too. Rapidly.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
I wonder what the bookies would have made of the The Hundred Years' War?
I reckon the Maid of Orléans would have led to some markets being voided
You'd have been rightfully outraged if you had a tenner on Next Head of French Army as "an illiterate 17 yo peasant girl prone to hallucinations." Million to one at least.
Well, truthfully it was the English decisions that made her hot stuff.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
Except that testing and vaccines serve two completely different purposes!
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
Yes, and the way to reduce hospitalisation is to cut community spread to very low levels. It isn't just 80+ people being hospitalised.
In terms of who to vaccinate first, it may be a choice between saving lives and saving life. I think we should go for the latter; my guess is they'll go for the former.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
Except that testing and vaccines serve two completely different purposes!
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
Yes, and the way to reduce hospitalisation is to cut community spread to very low levels. It isn't just 80+ people being hospitalised.
But it is primarily them.
We don't know who the superspreaders are. We do know who the hospitalised are. Vaccinating the hospitalised groups first guarantees a return faster than any alternative.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
Stopping the old from dying makes COVID background noise too. Rapidly.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
No it doesn't because anyone over 60 is at medium risk and anyone who is overweight is at medium risk. The CFR for both cohorts is pretty high, especially the latter and the hospitalisation rate for the latter is very high. Vaccinating oldies does nothing for them and the restrictions continue until these people are protected as well which is going to take months. With limited supply the strategy needs to be about reducing the R as much as possible not protecting individuals.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
Stopping the old from dying makes COVID background noise too. Rapidly.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
No it doesn't because anyone over 60 is at medium risk and anyone who is overweight is at medium risk. The CFR for both cohorts is pretty high, especially the latter and the hospitalisation rate for the latter is very high. Vaccinating oldies does nothing for them and the restrictions continue until these people are protected as well which is going to take months. With limited supply the strategy needs to be about reducing the R as much as possible not protecting individuals.
Not protecting individuals? Speak for yourself! Here's my arm and the sleeve is already rolled up!
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
Stopping the old from dying makes COVID background noise too. Rapidly.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
No it doesn't because anyone over 60 is at medium risk and anyone who is overweight is at medium risk. The CFR for both cohorts is pretty high, especially the latter and the hospitalisation rate for the latter is very high. Vaccinating oldies does nothing for them and the restrictions continue until these people are protected as well which is going to take months. With limited supply the strategy needs to be about reducing the R as much as possible not protecting individuals.
Over 60s are scheduled to be vaccinated by February or March already themselves.
No the restrictions won't continue for months. R will be reduced rapidly anyway and hospitalisations will have been slashed. If a few young overweight people are getting the virus that can happen under either scenario but it won't be causing lockdowns as it won't be overloading the NHS.
I used to go camping in the islands with that stuff and get the rest locally - the hard core packed at the beginning being muesli, oatcakes, cheese, corned beef, Smash and instant coffee ... oen never knew what was available locally in places like Rum.
Changed days a ghràidh, Tapas in the Rodel Hotel and Gran Reserva in the Clachan.
Finally, I think from a moral standpoint it isn't right to say no to teachers, pharmacists and dentists. All of these people are being asked to take extraordinary health risks on a daily basis, we now have the capability of protecting them while they carry out a hugely important public service. Keeping kids in school, keeping medicines dispensed and dental care available are necessary public services. We shouldn't be asking those who provide them to continue taking these risks when they don't need to, given the vaccine supply.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
Indeed. Vaccinating care homes alone will eliminate almost overnight about a quarter of hospitalisations and deaths. There's a bloody good reason that's priority number one.
The next priority is frontline NHS staff (as superspreaders to the vulnerable) and the most vulnerable. Quite right too.
Once those two groups are done, we will likely get rapidly back to where we were in July and August. Yes the virus is real still but we can kind of get back to normalish already. The risk of ICU overflowing will be over already.
As always this is great news for saving the NHS and bringing the fatality statistics down. However, I am of an age (too young for early wave vaccination, too old to be exempted by Covid-19) where I would still prefer to avoid Coronavirus in order to avoid being a number inside the deaths from Covid statistics.
As would we all. But I'm of an age where I'm more likely to be a road traffic accident statistic than a COVID statistic I believe.
Once my grandparents then parents are vaccinated then I am happy to take my own chances. The restrictions we have now aren't to prevent me getting it, they're to prevent them getting it. I am ok taking my chances but I don't want to pass it to them.
Betfair reportedly close to paying out on the result of the Battle of Gettysburg.
I bet they waited for four months until Lincoln's address at Gettysburg before paying out.
That's when the Army Of The Potomac was officially projected to have won.
Have they paid out for who won at Cannae yet?
Any specific relevance other than antiquity? In which case the Battle of Megiddo 1457 BC seems to be the benchmark. And that took seven months to get a clear result, with Thutmose III probably priced around 1.02 most of that time.
The Wars of the Roses would actually blow your mind - it took 35 years to get a clear result.
I wonder what the bookies would have made of the The Hundred Years' War?
I reckon the Maid of Orléans would have led to some markets being voided
You'd have been rightfully outraged if you had a tenner on Next Head of French Army as "an illiterate 17 yo peasant girl prone to hallucinations." Million to one at least.
If he had a tenner to put down on a bet in the 15th century then he'd be an billionaire in today's money.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
Except that testing and vaccines serve two completely different purposes!
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
Yes, and the way to reduce hospitalisation is to cut community spread to very low levels. It isn't just 80+ people being hospitalised.
But it is primarily them.
We don't know who the superspreaders are. We do know who the hospitalised are. Vaccinating the hospitalised groups first guarantees a return faster than any alternative.
A quarter of those hospitalised and critically ill are below 53 years old at the moment (according to ICNARC).
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
Stopping the old from dying makes COVID background noise too. Rapidly.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
No it doesn't because anyone over 60 is at medium risk and anyone who is overweight is at medium risk. The CFR for both cohorts is pretty high, especially the latter and the hospitalisation rate for the latter is very high. Vaccinating oldies does nothing for them and the restrictions continue until these people are protected as well which is going to take months. With limited supply the strategy needs to be about reducing the R as much as possible not protecting individuals.
Over 60s are scheduled to be vaccinated by February or March already themselves.
No the restrictions won't continue for months. R will be reduced rapidly anyway and hospitalisations will have been slashed. If a few young overweight people are getting the virus that can happen under either scenario but it won't be causing lockdowns as it won't be overloading the NHS.
Yes, they will. There is no way we will leave the tier system any time before the end of March and that's because the vaccine programme is designed to help a few individuals, not the whole nation.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
Except that testing and vaccines serve two completely different purposes!
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
Yes, and the way to reduce hospitalisation is to cut community spread to very low levels. It isn't just 80+ people being hospitalised.
But it is primarily them.
We don't know who the superspreaders are. We do know who the hospitalised are. Vaccinating the hospitalised groups first guarantees a return faster than any alternative.
A quarter of those hospitalised and critically ill are below 53 years old at the moment (according to ICNARC).
Extend that to 60 and that number goes much higher. The idea that vaccinating a few individuals that don't leave their care homes will suddenly allow us to live freely again is completely naïve.
Finally, I think from a moral standpoint it isn't right to say no to teachers, pharmacists and dentists. All of these people are being asked to take extraordinary health risks on a daily basis, we now have the capability of protecting them while they carry out a hugely important public service. Keeping kids in school, keeping medicines dispensed and dental care available are necessary public services. We shouldn't be asking those who provide them to continue taking these risks when they don't need to, given the vaccine supply.
Do dentists and pharmacists not count as healthcare workers? In which case they will get it early anyway?
Teachers if they're vulnerable will get it as fast as they can already. But vaccinating teachers prematurely won't meaningfully influence R.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
Indeed. Vaccinating care homes alone will eliminate almost overnight about a quarter of hospitalisations and deaths. There's a bloody good reason that's priority number one.
The next priority is frontline NHS staff (as superspreaders to the vulnerable) and the most vulnerable. Quite right too.
Once those two groups are done, we will likely get rapidly back to where we were in July and August. Yes the virus is real still but we can kind of get back to normalish already. The risk of ICU overflowing will be over already.
As always this is great news for saving the NHS and bringing the fatality statistics down. However, I am of an age (too young for early wave vaccination, too old to be exempted by Covid-19) where I would still prefer to avoid Coronavirus in order to avoid being a number inside the deaths from Covid statistics.
As would we all. But I'm of an age where I'm more likely to be a road traffic accident statistic than a COVID statistic I believe.
Once my grandparents then parents are vaccinated then I am happy to take my own chances. The restrictions we have now aren't to prevent me getting it, they're to prevent them getting it. I am ok taking my chances but I don't want to pass it to them.
I'm on the cusp though Philip. Under 60, so no vaccine until the penultimate tranche, but ever so slightly portly and over 55, so more susceptible to the Grim Reaper's scythe.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
That's not quite true: BioNTech did some work on viral load, and it appears that even those people who caught the disease (i.e. the 5%) had significantly lower levels of viral shedding than those in the control group with it.
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
Which is why the two prime superspreaders are being vaccinated in rounds one and two, before even the elderly are.
Yes, and I'm suggesting that school and university staff and pharmacists be added to that list because there is a huge amount of superspreading that happens in those places. Dentists as well given the close contact they have with their patients.
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
Except that testing and vaccines serve two completely different purposes!
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
Yes, and the way to reduce hospitalisation is to cut community spread to very low levels. It isn't just 80+ people being hospitalised.
But it is primarily them.
We don't know who the superspreaders are. We do know who the hospitalised are. Vaccinating the hospitalised groups first guarantees a return faster than any alternative.
A quarter of those hospitalised and critically ill are below 53 years old at the moment (according to ICNARC).
Extend that to 60 and that number goes much higher. The idea that vaccinating a few individuals that don't leave their care homes will suddenly allow us to live freely again is completely naïve.
But vaccinating those in care homes would remove from hospitals the equivalent of removing ALL under 53s from COVID added up altogether. And dramatically more of a proportion of deaths.
And it can be done quickly and easily. It is the quickest, cheapest, easiest and best return on vaccine doses available. Biggest bang for your buck. It is a no brainer.
Finally, I think from a moral standpoint it isn't right to say no to teachers, pharmacists and dentists. All of these people are being asked to take extraordinary health risks on a daily basis, we now have the capability of protecting them while they carry out a hugely important public service. Keeping kids in school, keeping medicines dispensed and dental care available are necessary public services. We shouldn't be asking those who provide them to continue taking these risks when they don't need to, given the vaccine supply.
Do dentists and pharmacists not count as healthcare workers? In which case they will get it early anyway?
Teachers if they're vulnerable will get it as fast as they can already. But vaccinating teachers prematurely won't meaningfully influence R.
Not unless they work in a hospital or doctor's surgery.
You're completely wrong about that. Schools are basically the major source of new infections, teachers are a major component of those new transmissions, they get it in the staff room and then pass it on to their family who then go out into the community and unknowingly pass it to others. Schools and university employees are unfortunately associated with being susperspreaders.
And from a moral standpoint it's simply wrong to ask any of them to take these risks of serious long term health issues when we have the means for them not to need to.
I think I must be the only person yearning for a return to the tiers. They seemed to really reduce the size of the winter wave, and allowed flexibility. Heck, I went to auctions during the tiers. Worked away from home. And it felt safe to be honest.
The lockdown ruined all of that. Can't wait for a tiered return!
NHS front line staff Pharmacists Care workers Front line school and university workers Dentists
Then go onto the rest of the list of old people etc...
All of these people are in the front line and are most likely to get and spread the virus. Our vaccine deployment starting with old people and not NHS staff makes absolutely no sense, the government are letting "must save all lives at any cost" dictate this policy but risking a much longer term cost of having a higher R.
My fear is there will be a "VIP" of vaccination. That includes, I imagine, the Queen and Prince Philip as well as presumably Charles and Camilla. I can live with that but I wouldn't like to see celebrities and politicians vaccinated before care workers and NHS workers - the notion money or celebrity moves you up the pecking order is reprehensible.
The more criteria you add the more difficult it will be to get to the right people. Age is the easiest thing for the NHS to know about, and the simplest to organise by.
By the time you've worked out who is a 'front line school worker' you could have vaccinated 100k people. It isn't worth the effort trying to work it out.
Besides, as soon as you make a list like that, you generate questions. Do care workers include the hidden army caring for their own relatives? Should bus drivers be on that list because they were badly affected in the first wave? What about supermarket workers?
Just get on with it by age, and do it as fast as possible. Include NHS workers, especially those actually doing the vaccination. They aren't too difficult, because they can organise it amongst themselves.
As for the royals, I should think Prince Philip will be in the top few thousand by age anyway. And Charlie has already had the lurgy.
It's not that difficult, you send vaccination teams to all schools and universities.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
Don't forget that nobody is entirely sure that being vaccinated stops you spreading it. That wasn't tested for in the trials.
Indeed Max's strategy works if you're seeking a zero COVID strategy.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
The whole point in vaccinating super spreaders first is that you rapidly bring the R down and the virus burns itself out while you vaccinate the wider population. It actually saves most lives and allows people to get on with life at the same time. If tomorrow we were able to get the R down to 0.3 overnight the whole nation immediately benefits from the vaccine. If we use it to vaccinate a few old people then only those few old people benefit because community transmission is still very high and restrictions can't be eased. It's not just old people that die of this, anyone over 60 has medium risk and anyone who is overweight (40% of the nation) is at medium risk. The restrictions don't disappear because the over 80s are immune.
If you want to hit R, perhaps vaccinating Welsh rugby club members first would be the best strategy? (again, assuming that vaccination actually stops spreading)
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
But there are people in hospitals because the R was 1.3 for ages. Bring the R down and the infection rate drops to what we had in the summer and COVID deaths become background noise and by targeting super spreaders for vaccination we can achieve this very quickly. What you want to do is prevent any more old people dying from this. What I'm suggesting makes COVID background noise the same as over the summer.
Stopping the old from dying makes COVID background noise too. Rapidly.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
No it doesn't because anyone over 60 is at medium risk and anyone who is overweight is at medium risk. The CFR for both cohorts is pretty high, especially the latter and the hospitalisation rate for the latter is very high. Vaccinating oldies does nothing for them and the restrictions continue until these people are protected as well which is going to take months. With limited supply the strategy needs to be about reducing the R as much as possible not protecting individuals.
Over 60s are scheduled to be vaccinated by February or March already themselves.
No the restrictions won't continue for months. R will be reduced rapidly anyway and hospitalisations will have been slashed. If a few young overweight people are getting the virus that can happen under either scenario but it won't be causing lockdowns as it won't be overloading the NHS.
Yes, they will. There is no way we will leave the tier system any time before the end of March and that's because the vaccine programme is designed to help a few individuals, not the whole nation.
Sage et al should definitely be modelling the impact of vaccinating super spreaders vs higher risk categories. Even if the first priority is indeed those most at high risk, just using risk order all the way down and not considering number of contacts is clearly going to be sub optimal. I think you are probably right, but it really needs some detailed modelling to get to a more confident answer.
I think I must be the only person yearning for a return to the tiers. They seemed to really reduce the size of the winter wave, and allowed flexibility. Heck, I went to auctions during the tiers. Worked away from home. And it felt safe to be honest.
The lockdown ruined all of that. Can't wait for a tiered return!
Any evidence for this? Doesn't feel to me like tiers were working at all.
Comments
At a million a week, you'd be down to the under 50s by what? Feb, March?
I do know that various vaccination sites are definitely being set up ready for the 1st December.
It seems to be empty warehouses, churches, and similar spacious structures.
‘Collapse’ in secondary school attendance warning
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55057125
After this week, three more to go. Unless something changes, we won’t make it.
Truthfully, we’ve got further than I ever expected.
As General Groves was wont to say......
I'll get my coat.
The vaccine needs to be deployed offensively not defensively. Vaccinating old people in care homes first is a defensive strategy, it protects those people and only them. Vaccinating teachers protects all of them plus kids, their parents and their own families. Vaccinating pharmacists protects all of the people who need medicine dispensed.
We started off using rapid testing defensively by only using it for care homes, that strategy didn't work and now the government has changed to use it to go out and find the virus. Vaccination is the same it needs to go out and find the virus and super spreaders so everyone benefits immediately.
I have a long-standing principle of never drink and gamble. I decided to drink in the end - and conked out at 1.30-2am so I missed all the action.
I’m not too annoyed with myself for missing the 2/1+ in the fog of war, what really annoys me is missing the evens available on Biden - a few weeks before, at the height of the Hunter Biden laptop nonsense.
I should be getting paid out at evens instead of 1/2. Grrrrr
HMQ is so unbelievably old that I can't see how you ever demonstrate safety for her, I would guess they may go for a regime of perpetual distancing and vaccinating the arse off anyone who gets within a Michael Fagan length of her rather than jabbing her.
I also had a trad bookie bet on Biden at 14/1 but only £25 (Paddy Power).
Given that it is the vulnerable getting sick going into hospitals that are causing the restrictions vaccinating them is killing two birds with one stone. It virtually doesn't matter if the grandkids have the virus if the grandparents have already been vaccinated.
Like Parks and Rec, Series 1 (2019) was short and not very good.
Like Parks and Rec, it miraculously came back for Series 2 (2020).
Unlike Parks and Rec, Series 2 wasn't an improvement due to the lead character being more loveable.
Vaccinating the vulnerable and workers who work with the vulnerable works if you're seeking to get life back to normal.
The virus will still be circulating in the spring but not many will be getting hospitalised so we can get back to normal. That's in everyone's interests. The young benefit more from grandpa being vaccinated and them getting to live like normal again than they benefit from being vaccinated themselves but still needing to stay at home so that grandpa doesn't get it.
While we have limited supply and capacity the vaccine needs to be used to bring down the R value as quickly as possible, that's what saves most lives and livelihoods and allows life to get back to normal for a majority of people. Once those most likely to spread it are vaccinated they government can use whatever list they want.
I wouldn't be surprised if banking, tech and other big industries bought private supply of the Moderna vaccine from February when it becomes available outside of the US, we could get to April with a significant proportion of workers already vaccinated privately through company schemes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuv_vbxu4lI
Care home staff are literally the first group to get it.
NHS staff are literally the second group to get it.
So what you want to happen is happening.
The priority is not to get R down. R is inconsequential when we have a vaccine. R is only relevant because we are trying to get hospitalisations down and the only method of getting hospitalisations down is to get R down. Once we are capable of largely eliminating the risk of hospitalisations for the vulnerable then it won't matter as much if R goes up again. It will go down naturally due to a higher proportion of people being immune but if it goes wild through a university that will be pretty inconsequential and meaningless.
Vaccinating the vulnerable gets hospitalisations down an order of magnitude faster than getting R down does. I'd rather have a higher R but lower hospitalisations than the other way around.
My only significant loss was on a NC Biden win. My 160M turnout will be a near miss but significantly offset by other turnout wins. Overall a quite splendid return and I will be making an appropriate donation to the Distressed PB Feather Boa Wearers and Organ Fund (Crossdresser Section)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7984436.stm
--AS
Everyone else can be tackled using the flu jab model where the patient opts in and walks to the surgery, pharmacy or caravan in a car park. It is harder and therefore less sensible to worry about age groups in the community. If people are effectively housebound, they are probably not going to catch anything anyway and can be mopped up later, rather than prioritising house calls simply because they are old.
It is causing chaos and damage, and there are ways of making it easier that are being rejected out of hand because nobody in this government of crooks and retards, including their civil servants, have the courage or imagination to deal with it.
If they want schools open on their terms, they need to be vaccinating like yesterday. If they don’t vaccinate, they can’t have that.
I don't know how the mood music would be if the oldies aren't dying so much, but those (mainly men, mainly non-white) in their 40s and 50s are still filling ICU. We may well find out. I do think the transition from now to mostly-vaccinated is going to have some sticky moments.
--AS
Anyway, I really don't think the government will be too keen on categorising people based on occupation. It is too much of a minefield.
We are locked down because too many people are in hospital, not because R is 1.1.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/24/welsh-police-investigate-im-a-celebrity-non-native-species-aoe
We're making the same mistakes over and over again. We used rapid testing exactly as you're suggesting we use vaccines, we already know it doesn't cut community transmission to a low enough level for restrictions to be relaxed.
The next priority is frontline NHS staff (as superspreaders to the vulnerable) and the most vulnerable. Quite right too.
Once those two groups are done, we will likely get rapidly back to where we were in July and August. Yes the virus is real still but we can kind of get back to normalish already. The risk of ICU overflowing will be over already.
The woodchipper is roaring. Trump is standing close, ready to ceremonially feed the first branch into its whirling, gnashing hopper. Trump's long red tie flapped around in the tail end of the January storm that had brought snow to parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Trump then stepped to his side, and dropped the branch in. As he spoke, his words were drowned out by the grinding wood and a strong gust of wind. His tie flicked him in the face causing him to recoil, and he thrust out an arm to steady himself. At the same time, on the lawn, a bank of photographers clicked greedily at the scene: a lame-duck President being buffeted by the weather and whose words were at last obscured by nature and machine. They were looking for a metaphor befitting the last days of a chaotic, self-defeating presidency. One more illustration of incompetence and hubris. One last front page. One final Trump splash.
We need a low level of hospitalisations NOT a low level of transmission.
Testing works if you can contract trace a tiny number and eliminate the virus but we've been incapable of doing that.
Vaccinating works by slowing spread but more significantly halting deaths/hospitalisations. So we need to use the vaccine not just to stop the spread but to rapidly stop the hospitalisations. With the hospitalisations halting we can very rapidly get back to normal.
Million to one at least.
Plus if you get R down and lift restrictions then R will go back up and people will be hospitalised again.
We don't know who the superspreaders are. We do know who the hospitalised are. Vaccinating the hospitalised groups first guarantees a return faster than any alternative.
No the restrictions won't continue for months. R will be reduced rapidly anyway and hospitalisations will have been slashed. If a few young overweight people are getting the virus that can happen under either scenario but it won't be causing lockdowns as it won't be overloading the NHS.
Popular vote shares in US Presidential elections since the year 2000:
https://twitter.com/marketwarbles/status/1331339632340922368
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/why-democrats-face-an-uphill-battle-in-georgia-e2-80-99s-senate-runoffs/ar-BB1bhzjJ
Once my grandparents then parents are vaccinated then I am happy to take my own chances. The restrictions we have now aren't to prevent me getting it, they're to prevent them getting it. I am ok taking my chances but I don't want to pass it to them.
If so, Trump only in at number 10, loser!
Teachers if they're vulnerable will get it as fast as they can already. But vaccinating teachers prematurely won't meaningfully influence R.
https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1331341306283630593?s=20
And it can be done quickly and easily. It is the quickest, cheapest, easiest and best return on vaccine doses available. Biggest bang for your buck. It is a no brainer.
You're completely wrong about that. Schools are basically the major source of new infections, teachers are a major component of those new transmissions, they get it in the staff room and then pass it on to their family who then go out into the community and unknowingly pass it to others. Schools and university employees are unfortunately associated with being susperspreaders.
And from a moral standpoint it's simply wrong to ask any of them to take these risks of serious long term health issues when we have the means for them not to need to.
The lockdown ruined all of that. Can't wait for a tiered return!
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1331333594149695489?s=20
https://twitter.com/bamacgabhann/status/1331210144307425280?s=20