From what I can see there is no real cast iron proof yet this mutant strain does travel faster than other strains, and there is no proof whatever it is any more or less threatening than the ordinary, common or garden, boring strain. And there won;t be evidence of the latter for weeks.
But our lives have to be destroyed even more in the meantime.
The reports this morning are that Porton Down have confirmed it is far more infectious than the previous strain.
I'm not sure that's correct.
Read what Whitty has said. His comments are actually difficult to interpret. Perhaps intentionally. They refer to modelling, which makes me suspicious.
Is this a fact? its difficult for ordinary people to determine. As it is meant to be.
The whole idea is we do what they say now, the proof's in the post.
Didn't Whitty say that on Monday? The facts change quickly in the world of Coronavirus
They do when we don;t do exactly what SAGE want, exactly when they want us to do it.
It looks like the hassle of getting the superfrozen vaccine into care homes is pushing the government to revise its plans and earmark the AZ virus for them. Not such an illogical strategy, given that the AZ is much easier to transport and store, and appears to provide near complete protection against symptoms, if not infection. But not the priority plan for the Pfizer one that was intended.
If so then that sounds like it might be a sensible decision, which is a rarity coming from this lot. If they're having real trouble getting the BioNTech effort into Shady Pines, then they're better off being flexible and jumping forward to the next group in the queue. There's little point in slowing down the delivery of treatment to over 80s still living in their own homes just to stick rigidly to a list, when that group is about four or five times larger than the total population in care.
And to be brutally honest its a better idea to prioritise the oldies who still have years of high quality of life ahead of them rather than those in care homes.
I`ve made this point before, God`s waiting room and all that. But the argument against is that vaccinating those in care homes may relieve more pressure on health services and, of course, those of us with relatives in care homes are waiting for vaccinations so that we can visit our loved ones.
You don't need to vaccinate the people resident in care homes at all.
You need to vaccinate everyone entering & leaving the care homes. Much more efficient.
My understanding on this, and my hunch from ongoing battles with my mum`s care home, is that they will not allow access unless the resident is vaccinated. I don`t think that being vaccinated means that you cannot transmit Covid, so vaccinating visitors will not be sufficient.
Furthermore, given how risk averse and commercially savvy they are being, it wouldn`t be surprised if they insist on both visitor and resident being vaccinated. I dearly hope not, as I don`t expect to be vaccinated until May.
The government have been remiss in not providing clear instruction to care home to date, and I have no reason to believe that this will change. They have basically kicked the can to the individual care home; the power these private businesses are wielding is astonishing, in my view.
Care homes should already know how to protect their residents from infectious diseases. It's business as usual for them.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Can it mutate the other way please? I mean, into something less contagious and dangerous please?
2020 has had far too many shit sandwiches as it is.
It probably already has. Those strains haven't survived though. What we need is a strain that is highly contagious, harmless, and similar enough to the current one so it still confers immunity to it.
Evolution tends towards more contagious and less deadly, so its destiny is probably to be added to the panoply of ‘normal’ flu viruses that pay us a visit each winter.
Well I hope so. Presumably Spanish Flu is still in circulation but no longer kills us.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
That sentence implies that, without Covid, some of them would have lived forever.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
contrarian firmly believes that Covid was over in America in Mid July.
I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth, matey.
It would be less tempting if you were to change your username. How about Flatearther?
Yeh well, insults come when arguments cannot be engaged with.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
I read somewhere the average loss of life expectancy for Covid victims is 10 years. Sorry, can't remember where to quote it.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
Inspired the gob smacking article posted by @ydoethur in the last thread I have a second topic for the Truth and Reconciliation committee after they have dealt with "Why the fuck were the airports kept completely open"
It is "WTF was up with schools". The idea that someone can state that schools being open did not increase spread of virus is either an astonishing lie or and attempt at word play to avoid rating the truth.
When the half term break happened cases stopped growing/fell. The attempt to claim no correlation is staggering. Who is so invested in this?
The Department for Education.
But the academics concerned should be facing disciplinary.
Edit - for those who have not read it, this was the article in question:
Nobody rational or capable of even the most basic analysis could possibly conclude that keeping schools open did not increase the spread of the virus. Of course it did. The much trickier bit is whether the risk of the virus to that age group (and the teaching staff) is sufficient to offset the clear harm of disrupting children's education. The even trickier thing is if your target is an R rate of less than 1, how much of your "1" does having schools open cost and what do you need to do to offset it?
These are very difficult judgments indeed and I have sympathy with those having to make them. I agree with the government that in constructing the "wish list" of things we can do whilst keeping under R1 schools should be right up there, right at the top. But sometimes it seems even a wish list is a bit of a delusion and we have to accept that no kind of normal life is possible whilst this virus is at play in our society.
I would agree with much of that. But lying to justify a policy that has failed in the first place due to a wilful blindness to obvious facts is absolutely not on. That’s not Trumpian, it’s Bolivarian.
What did the late Simon do, to deserve that comment?
Bolivarian socialism - ie the lying, cheating, thieving, murdering scumbags Chavez and Maduro.
Half a moment, YDoethur, before you assemble the disciplinary committees, as a good historian, you need to check the primary source, not the journalistic write-up
I agree it is a pretty unimpressive, middle-of-the-pack piece of work. But, there is not a huge amount to disagree with there -- it is all pretty unarguable, even mundane.
In fact, the paper does not even set out to answer the interesting questions, such as the role of asymptomatic cases in schools. It is just a bald statistical analysis of some data that could be done by a semi-competent A Level student.
The paper does not appear to have any real conclusions -- always the mark of a poorish paper.
It is the write-up in the Standard which is sloppy & seems to put a spin on the paper which is not present in the original paper & conclusions. Arts graduates, probably 😁
Certainly, the title in the Standard "Schools do not appear to be increasing the spread of covid and should remain open" does not appear in the scientific paper anywhere, at least as far as I can see.
Here’s what the author retweeted: https://twitter.com/PHE_uk/status/1339517263729274887 So he has endorsed the idea that transmission happens outside schools, not within them, and that schools are therefore suffering because of incidence elsewhere rather than the other way around.
Which is one possible reading of the evidence they had, but as that ignored the minor detail that case numbers correlate closely with the opening/reopening of schools and universities, not at all the most likely one. That evidence has been ignored, and given his past research record has been to consistently downplay the level of infection among children, it’s hard to believe it’s not deliberate.
Correlation isn't causation of course. They reopened at a time of year when the weather was getting cooler and cases were already rising. Importation of the virus by holidaymakers over the summer also seems to have been an issue.
We are at a stage in this God-awful business where, all at once, mass vaccination has started and a new and more easily transmissible strain of the virus is running amok and appears to be expanding its reach across the land. The best thing to do, I would suggest, is therefore to abandon the epidemiological debate and experimentation with schools and lock the kids back up, along with everybody else, as was done in March.
Alas, I fear what will actually happen is that some token travel restrictions that do almost no good will be announced today, whilst the idiotic Christmas plans will go ahead and all the kids will troop back to the petri dishes in January. The Government will insist that children's rights to education trump everybody else's right to life, presumably because to do otherwise would upset Red Wall voters and cost it a few percentage points in the opinion polls.
Well I'm sorry, but I'm past caring about two or three months' disruption to education at this stage. I really couldn't give a flying wotsit if little Annabel is bored sat at home, or gets an indifferent set of GCSEs this Summer because her Zoom lessons were crap. Everybody I love has survived this thing so far and I'd like that still to be the case at Easter. We can sift through the rubble and start rebuilding once the driving cause of the destruction has been crushed.
What we need to see is an analysis of infection rates in parents and teachers. I'm not sure I've seen one but as you are so keen on closing down education I presume you have. That would tell us whether kids were spreading the virus into the wider population, or just among themselves.
Unless there's a readily available, plentiful and reliable source of such data compiled and ready to be shoved through a computer (and insofar as I'm aware there isn't, because no reports of such analyses have emerged, although others may know different) then we don't have time to cock about doing the work from scratch.
The bottom line is that social contact encourages spread, and there's now a new variant of the virus in widespread circulation which is even easier to pass around, and appears to have the Government and the medics in full panic mode. Therefore, apply the precautionary principle and lock down. It may not be enough to stop the bloody thing in its tracks but at least it ought to slow it down.
It would be a different matter, granted, if there were not millions of doses of an effective vaccine available and already being administered, but the reality is that there are. Reopening schools and universities in the New Year is an unnecessary risk. Students can make do with Zoom until Easter. It's crap, it affects the poor disproportionately badly, and I hate having to suggest it because I loathe the restrictions and I know they'll cause suffering, but the alternative is to carry on as we are, which clearly isn't working.
Well I see Boris is doing a 4pm presser with both Vallance and Whitty so something draconian is probably likely.
Yes, my husband just told me that was coming.
Listen, I have skin in the game. Husband is a shielder. Best friend at work is a shielder. Dad and Stepdad both in their 70s and in remission from cancer. Mum nearly 70 and with early stage COPD. Octogenarian Mother-in-Law living on her own in South Wales. And I have no kiddies to worry about. It's unsurprising that I've flipped fully into the lock everyone up camp at this stage, but I appreciate the havoc that such an approach causes and, intellectually at least, I'd be a lot more sceptical of it *IF* the vaccine projects weren't at an advanced stage. I've shown a lot of sympathy to risk segmentation before now. But I simply think that the combination of vaccine availability and the new variant tips the scales decisively in favour of harsher intervention.
I hope that, if we throw everything including the kitchen sink at mass vaccination, we can get out of this mire in three months. I'm fearful it might take five or six. But either way getting tough seems to be the least worst option now.
I agree with you - I have "flipped" on this somewhat as well. With vaccines within touching distance it has become more of an imperative not to catch the pox now. However, I would like to be more reassured about there being sufficient supply of vaccine and of the health service`s ability to administer the jabs quickly and efficiently and on a massive scale.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
As I posted yesterday, a 90-year old who contracts COVID has a 5% chance of death if female and a 10% chance if male. Not odds you would take voluntarily, but a long way from the “death sentence for our grannies” that you’d imagine from some of the media coverage.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
You are showing a complete misunderstanding which has been explained several times on PB. Basically, those who are 80 are going to live a lot longer than 1 year on average, because they have already survived to the age of 80 and the ones who died before then are not counted any more in the calculation of the average.
Indeed. With your party's fine track record of letting people die in their tens of thousands in care homes because "whoops", they absolutely should continue with their plan to both kill your granny and your local pubs and restaurants.
It looks like the hassle of getting the superfrozen vaccine into care homes is pushing the government to revise its plans and earmark the AZ virus for them. Not such an illogical strategy, given that the AZ is much easier to transport and store, and appears to provide near complete protection against symptoms, if not infection. But not the priority plan for the Pfizer one that was intended.
If so then that sounds like it might be a sensible decision, which is a rarity coming from this lot. If they're having real trouble getting the BioNTech effort into Shady Pines, then they're better off being flexible and jumping forward to the next group in the queue. There's little point in slowing down the delivery of treatment to over 80s still living in their own homes just to stick rigidly to a list, when that group is about four or five times larger than the total population in care.
And to be brutally honest its a better idea to prioritise the oldies who still have years of high quality of life ahead of them rather than those in care homes.
I`ve made this point before, God`s waiting room and all that. But the argument against is that vaccinating those in care homes may relieve more pressure on health services and, of course, those of us with relatives in care homes are waiting for vaccinations so that we can visit our loved ones.
You don't need to vaccinate the people resident in care homes at all.
You need to vaccinate everyone entering & leaving the care homes. Much more efficient.
I don`t think that being vaccinated means that you cannot transmit Covid, so vaccinating visitors will not be sufficient.
Really ?
So, the pb.com Skiing Club -- compromised mainly of elderly pb-ers getting an early vaccine & saying they were fine to go skiing in Italy in February -- are actually being characteristically selfish.
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
That shows a heretic denial of divine omnipotence and power. You'd better resign from the C of E and the Tory Party.
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
You are showing a complete misunderstanding which has been explained several times on PB. Basically, those who are 80 are going to live a lot longer than 1 year on average, because they have already survived to the age of 80 and the ones who died before then are not counted any more in the calculation of the average.
Precisely.
On average at birth someone has a chance of dying from a childhood illness, or a driving accident as a young adult, or suicide as a young adult etc etc etc that the 80 year old can't die from as they have already survived all.of those potentially fatal incidents.
If an actuarial used life expectancy at birth for the retired they'd become bankrupt pretty damn quick.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
That shows a heretic denial of divine omnipotence and power. You'd better resign from the C of E and the Tory Party.
No, as since Adam ate from the tree of knowledge man has had free will, God does not intervene, we just get judged on how we used it on the Day of Judgemenr
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
What is 'concerning' and 'worrying' is that we will spending GBP400bn pounds in a fiscal year more than we are gathering in taxes. At least. A year.
IF we carrying on like that for much longer, we won;t have a health service, a whole range of other public services or much of a life worth living at all for the 99.5% who survive covid, for ever.
I reckon voters know this. And that's the real reason they are starting to get restive, and starting to walk away from the main parties (judging from that poll).
The MMT fairy is out the box. A one off big bazooka of monetised government debt for something like a pandemic, might not seem a big deal. But it impoverishes those who rely on an earned income to live life and build wealth, and it enriches rent seekers. It’s a total catastrophe for our long term economic good fortune because it totally destroys the incentives structure and causes deep social division, as it happens on an old - young basis.
What is worse is people will now say let’s just do this for everything. Free Broadband! Water renationalisation! Aircraft carriers! Triple lock pensions! Third world aid! The next “killer pandemic” (which come every Parliament or two conveniently enough). Take your pick based upon your political stripes.
And people don’t realise that ultimately what you’re doing is causing huge asset price inflation. Which you can start to tax but it’s then a spiral down the toilet hole.
The BoE are still insulting our intelligence by saying QE is just a liquidity provision facility. Pull the other one. When will someone call out our betters on their total bullshit?
And here we come to today, yet more draconian anti economy health policy to be announced, when we are still hovering at only 15% above excess death for the time of year. Because who cares about money and debt. “Every life is precious and every death tragic, how dare you question us you ignorant fucking covidiot”.
I’m tired. Tired tired tired of this. People need to stop thinking that fate can be controlled and get on with it.
I agree with you about money printing. If you can do it in enormous size to pay for a pandemic why can't you do it to eradicate global poverty? Or just to increase everybody's standard of living? I smell a rat. But your last bit is nonsense. A terrible new virus hit. Without measures there would have been sickness & death on a scale that would have collapsed health services and led to social disorder and economic catastrophe. So "distancing" measures were taken around the World to buy the time to find a vaccine and allow normality to resume asap. It has worked and both the health and financial outcome will be better than they otherwise would have been. Well done World.
The SNP got 63 seats in 2016 so not a vast change since, plenty of time to squeeze it back.
It only needs 7 SNP constituency seats to be lost to the Unionist parties thanks to tactical voting on those numbers for the SNP to fail to win a majority
You didn't answer the last 3 times I asked a similar question. You said if the SNP didn't get an overall majority there was zero chance of another indy referendum being granted. What difference would them getting an overall majority make?
There would be absolutely zero chance of Boris giving the SNP a referendum if the SNP fail to even match the Holyrood majority they got in 2011 before the 2014 independence referendum.
If the SNP do get a majority Boris will still likely refuse the referendum as UK government policy is 2014 was a once in a generation referendum but Sturgeon would be able to put more pressure on him as a result
If he refuses to grant a referendum then he is a bloody fool and a hypocrite. At the moment - in spite of what the polls are showing, the Unionists have a reasonable chance of winning another referendum. If he refuses to allow one they will go ahead anyway and the Independence side will win very easily. Now I want Independence to win but if Boris does not then he would be a fool to refuse a referendum.
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
Indeed. With your party's fine track record of letting people die in their tens of thousands in care homes because "whoops", they absolutely should continue with their plan to both kill your granny and your local pubs and restaurants.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
The average life expectancy of an 80 year old in the UK is about nine years for men and ten years for women, according to this handy ONS tool that it took me about ten seconds to Google:
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
What is 'concerning' and 'worrying' is that we will spending GBP400bn pounds in a fiscal year more than we are gathering in taxes. At least. A year.
IF we carrying on like that for much longer, we won;t have a health service, a whole range of other public services or much of a life worth living at all for the 99.5% who survive covid, for ever.
I reckon voters know this. And that's the real reason they are starting to get restive, and starting to walk away from the main parties (judging from that poll).
The MMT fairy is out the box. A one off big bazooka of monetised government debt for something like a pandemic, might not seem a big deal. But it impoverishes those who rely on an earned income to live life and build wealth, and it enriches rent seekers. It’s a total catastrophe for our long term economic good fortune because it totally destroys the incentives structure and causes deep social division, as it happens on an old - young basis.
What is worse is people will now say let’s just do this for everything. Free Broadband! Water renationalisation! Aircraft carriers! Triple lock pensions! Third world aid! The next “killer pandemic” (which come every Parliament or two conveniently enough). Take your pick based upon your political stripes.
And people don’t realise that ultimately what you’re doing is causing huge asset price inflation. Which you can start to tax but it’s then a spiral down the toilet hole.
The BoE are still insulting our intelligence by saying QE is just a liquidity provision facility. Pull the other one. When will someone call out our betters on their total bullshit?
And here we come to today, yet more draconian anti economy health policy to be announced, when we are still hovering at only 15% above excess death for the time of year. Because who cares about money and debt. “Every life is precious and every death tragic, how dare you question us you ignorant fucking covidiot”.
I’m tired. Tired tired tired of this. People need to stop thinking that fate can be controlled and get on with it.
I agree with you about money printing. If you can do it in enormous size to pay for a pandemic why can't you do it to eradicate global poverty? Or just to increase everybody's standard of living? I smell a rat. But your last bit is nonsense. A terrible new virus hit. Without measures there would have been sickness & death on a scale that would have collapsed health services and led to social disorder and economic catastrophe. So "distancing" measures were taken around the World to buy the time to find a vaccine and allow normality to resume asap. It has worked and both the health and financial outcome will be better than they otherwise would have been. Well done World.
Because printing money on an ongoing basis leads to rampant inflation and misery. Every time it has happened.
Printing for an emergency is different to doing it consistently.
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
The over 80s seem to think they have perfect right to ten more golden years, whatever the sacrifices the young have to make and more to the point future generations have to make, struggling under the yoke of enormous debts at every stage of their lives. This after they have enjoyed far more life than any generation, ever, already?
Are those years being bought at far, far too high a price? I would argue the answer is a resounding yes.
Its the modern equivalent of sending the young people over the top at the Somme.
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
That shows a heretic denial of divine omnipotence and power. You'd better resign from the C of E and the Tory Party.
No, as since Adam ate from the tree of knowledge man has had free will, God does not intervene, we just get judged on how we used it on the Day of Judgemenr
Eh?? That is in itself profoundly heretic as it denies the Annunciation, Nativity, the Trinity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Redemption.
And a Calvinist would have different emphases, too.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
The average life expectancy of an 80 year old in the UK is about nine years for men and ten years for women, according to this handy ONS tool that it took me about ten seconds to Google:
Look at the numbers if you dare. We are going bankrupt.
How will you feel when the NHS cannot afford the drugs and other expensive treatments I know from your posts you rely on?
Because that situation will kill you a lot faster and a lot surer than COVID. And millions more beside you.
The only way the NHS will fail to afford the drugs and other expensive treatments many of us rely on is if there is a conscious government decision to starve it of funds rather than, for example, tap into the estimated £15,000,000,000,000 (£15 trillion) wealth that exists in this country.
What is 'concerning' and 'worrying' is that we will spending GBP400bn pounds in a fiscal year more than we are gathering in taxes. At least. A year.
IF we carrying on like that for much longer, we won;t have a health service, a whole range of other public services or much of a life worth living at all for the 99.5% who survive covid, for ever.
I reckon voters know this. And that's the real reason they are starting to get restive, and starting to walk away from the main parties (judging from that poll).
The MMT fairy is out the box. A one off big bazooka of monetised government debt for something like a pandemic, might not seem a big deal. But it impoverishes those who rely on an earned income to live life and build wealth, and it enriches rent seekers. It’s a total catastrophe for our long term economic good fortune because it totally destroys the incentives structure and causes deep social division, as it happens on an old - young basis.
What is worse is people will now say let’s just do this for everything. Free Broadband! Water renationalisation! Aircraft carriers! Triple lock pensions! Third world aid! The next “killer pandemic” (which come every Parliament or two conveniently enough). Take your pick based upon your political stripes.
And people don’t realise that ultimately what you’re doing is causing huge asset price inflation. Which you can start to tax but it’s then a spiral down the toilet hole.
The BoE are still insulting our intelligence by saying QE is just a liquidity provision facility. Pull the other one. When will someone call out our betters on their total bullshit?
And here we come to today, yet more draconian anti economy health policy to be announced, when we are still hovering at only 15% above excess death for the time of year. Because who cares about money and debt. “Every life is precious and every death tragic, how dare you question us you ignorant fucking covidiot”.
I’m tired. Tired tired tired of this. People need to stop thinking that fate can be controlled and get on with it.
I agree with you about money printing. If you can do it in enormous size to pay for a pandemic why can't you do it to eradicate global poverty? Or just to increase everybody's standard of living? I smell a rat. But your last bit is nonsense. A terrible new virus hit. Without measures there would have been sickness & death on a scale that would have collapsed health services and led to social disorder and economic catastrophe. So "distancing" measures were taken around the World to buy the time to find a vaccine and allow normality to resume asap. It has worked and both the health and financial outcome will be better than they otherwise would have been. Well done World.
Because printing money on an ongoing basis leads to rampant inflation and misery. Every time it has happened.
Printing for an emergency is different to doing it consistently.
Depends how many "emergencies" there are. Which in turn depends on who's in charge of the definition.
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Who gives a fuck about your electoral positioning vs The Nigel.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
The life expectancy for an 80 year-old female in the UK is 90.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
The average life expectancy of an 80 year old in the UK is about nine years for men and ten years for women, according to this handy ONS tool that it took me about ten seconds to Google:
I really believe the mainstream churches should have cancelled their Christmas services weeks ago. Every year they like to remind us that Christ is the reason for the season. They should show some compassion and give a lead to government and public alike.
I'm a Christian myself. There's too much striving after old-style normality for a comfort blanket. There are plenty of ways to celebrate the spiritual season of Christmas without meeting up in a church, or even outside for a carol service.
God delivered this awful virus upon us, so it seems only fair to give up worshiping s/he/it for a while.
No, the Chinese did via unregulated wet markets and labs.
If you want to boycott all Chinese goods as a result that is your affair
That shows a heretic denial of divine omnipotence and power. You'd better resign from the C of E and the Tory Party.
No, as since Adam ate from the tree of knowledge man has had free will, God does not intervene, we just get judged on how we used it on the Day of Judgemenr
Free will is a thing when the going is easy and options are plentiful. Options diminish rapidly as things get tougher, as does our ability to make good decisions. Free will ultimately goes out the window. God does not exist.
What is 'concerning' and 'worrying' is that we will spending GBP400bn pounds in a fiscal year more than we are gathering in taxes. At least. A year.
IF we carrying on like that for much longer, we won;t have a health service, a whole range of other public services or much of a life worth living at all for the 99.5% who survive covid, for ever.
I reckon voters know this. And that's the real reason they are starting to get restive, and starting to walk away from the main parties (judging from that poll).
The MMT fairy is out the box. A one off big bazooka of monetised government debt for something like a pandemic, might not seem a big deal. But it impoverishes those who rely on an earned income to live life and build wealth, and it enriches rent seekers. It’s a total catastrophe for our long term economic good fortune because it totally destroys the incentives structure and causes deep social division, as it happens on an old - young basis.
What is worse is people will now say let’s just do this for everything. Free Broadband! Water renationalisation! Aircraft carriers! Triple lock pensions! Third world aid! The next “killer pandemic” (which come every Parliament or two conveniently enough). Take your pick based upon your political stripes.
And people don’t realise that ultimately what you’re doing is causing huge asset price inflation. Which you can start to tax but it’s then a spiral down the toilet hole.
The BoE are still insulting our intelligence by saying QE is just a liquidity provision facility. Pull the other one. When will someone call out our betters on their total bullshit?
And here we come to today, yet more draconian anti economy health policy to be announced, when we are still hovering at only 15% above excess death for the time of year. Because who cares about money and debt. “Every life is precious and every death tragic, how dare you question us you ignorant fucking covidiot”.
I’m tired. Tired tired tired of this. People need to stop thinking that fate can be controlled and get on with it.
I agree with you about money printing. If you can do it in enormous size to pay for a pandemic why can't you do it to eradicate global poverty? Or just to increase everybody's standard of living? I smell a rat. But your last bit is nonsense. A terrible new virus hit. Without measures there would have been sickness & death on a scale that would have collapsed health services and led to social disorder and economic catastrophe. So "distancing" measures were taken around the World to buy the time to find a vaccine and allow normality to resume asap. It has worked and both the health and financial outcome will be better than they otherwise would have been. Well done World.
Where is your evidence? Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. Locking down a bunch of infected people with their family to “save the nhs” seems to be counter even to government’s very narrow goal of reducing death with covid. Taking infected people at gunpoint to a military “hospital” as was conducted in China? Now that’s a different thing. Locking your borders before there is widespread seeding as in NZ? Ditto.
Feels to me we are pissing on our own foot, celebrating and mourning the natural ebbs and flows of the virus through the seasons and each cluster increase and burnout the way the ancients prayed to the sun.
Show me EVIDENCE that lockdowns as practiced in western democracies makes a blind bit of difference.
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Farage is irrelevant.
He won't be come the New Year if Boris cancels Christmas and we are all then back to lockdown in January, if he then compromises with the EU to get a trade deal, as he would likely have to, then Farage would see the biggest comeback since Lazarus
What is 'concerning' and 'worrying' is that we will spending GBP400bn pounds in a fiscal year more than we are gathering in taxes. At least. A year.
IF we carrying on like that for much longer, we won;t have a health service, a whole range of other public services or much of a life worth living at all for the 99.5% who survive covid, for ever.
I reckon voters know this. And that's the real reason they are starting to get restive, and starting to walk away from the main parties (judging from that poll).
The MMT fairy is out the box. A one off big bazooka of monetised government debt for something like a pandemic, might not seem a big deal. But it impoverishes those who rely on an earned income to live life and build wealth, and it enriches rent seekers. It’s a total catastrophe for our long term economic good fortune because it totally destroys the incentives structure and causes deep social division, as it happens on an old - young basis.
What is worse is people will now say let’s just do this for everything. Free Broadband! Water renationalisation! Aircraft carriers! Triple lock pensions! Third world aid! The next “killer pandemic” (which come every Parliament or two conveniently enough). Take your pick based upon your political stripes.
And people don’t realise that ultimately what you’re doing is causing huge asset price inflation. Which you can start to tax but it’s then a spiral down the toilet hole.
The BoE are still insulting our intelligence by saying QE is just a liquidity provision facility. Pull the other one. When will someone call out our betters on their total bullshit?
And here we come to today, yet more draconian anti economy health policy to be announced, when we are still hovering at only 15% above excess death for the time of year. Because who cares about money and debt. “Every life is precious and every death tragic, how dare you question us you ignorant fucking covidiot”.
I’m tired. Tired tired tired of this. People need to stop thinking that fate can be controlled and get on with it.
I agree with you about money printing. If you can do it in enormous size to pay for a pandemic why can't you do it to eradicate global poverty? Or just to increase everybody's standard of living? I smell a rat. But your last bit is nonsense. A terrible new virus hit. Without measures there would have been sickness & death on a scale that would have collapsed health services and led to social disorder and economic catastrophe. So "distancing" measures were taken around the World to buy the time to find a vaccine and allow normality to resume asap. It has worked and both the health and financial outcome will be better than they otherwise would have been. Well done World.
Because printing money on an ongoing basis leads to rampant inflation and misery. Every time it has happened.
Printing for an emergency is different to doing it consistently.
It'll be far worse this time because of crypto currencies.
Wealth will be able to drain out of the fiat system at much quicker rates, as people strive to avoid the gargantuan tax bills that will follow this insanity. Its already happening, but you can probably add a nought to whatever crypto prices are now in the coming years anyway.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
The average life expectancy of an 80 year old in the UK is about nine years for men and ten years for women, according to this handy ONS tool that it took me about ten seconds to Google:
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
The over 80s seem to think they have perfect right to ten more golden years, whatever the sacrifices the young have to make and more to the point future generations have to make, struggling under the yoke of enormous debts at every stage of their lives. This after they have enjoyed far more life than any generation, ever, already?
Are those years being bought at far, far too high a price? I would argue the answer is a resounding yes.
Its the modern equivalent of sending the young people over the top at the Somme.
Anthem for Doomed Youth 2, the sequel.
More sloppy thinking. The balance of risk is difficult, but it's not a given that opening up the country is the best course of action. The NHS mustn't be overwhelmed by Covid victims, if that happens we ALL will suffer, young, middle aged and old. It's not either/or it's much more nuanced and I don't envy those making the decisions. I wish them well in getting it right.
What we need to hear at 4pm, in tandem with the draconian lockdown, is the approval and immediate roll-out of the Oxford vaccine.
Just hold on folks - the cavalry are on their way. And boy, are they needed....
No. For once I disagree with you.
It is bloody needed but it mustn't even appear to be politicised.
Approval asap but at a separate press conference.
That was the bad news. But two days later - here's the good news. The optics of that are worse, IMHO. Just give people the reason for needing the lockdown NOW - to get the Oxford jab out there en masse. They might buy into its need straight away, rather than having got all het up for a couple of days, during which time they have decided "fuck it - I'm seeing granny..."
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Average life expectancy of the average 80 year old is a LOT more than two years!
I hope the people dealing with this crisis have a better grasp of statistics.
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Anyone who doesn't drive would be excluded from meeting anyone outside walking distance on Christmas Day
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
The average life expectancy of an 80 year old in the UK is about nine years for men and ten years for women, according to this handy ONS tool that it took me about ten seconds to Google:
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
As sad as it seems I think the decision to cancel Christmas is correct.
We are getting ahead of ourselves. We don't know what measures are to be announced. They might very well be half-measures.
Suppose both that most of England outside the South East is permitted to proceed with the nutty Christmas plan, and that the Government continues to insist on bringing back the schools. The effect of any measures that are implemented is then likely to be very limited.
New virus strain - really not looking good at all.
Looks like Christmas cancelled. Can't see how we get out of this one - vaccines seem the only hope..
What does really not looking good at all mean?
Our liberty has to be destroyed and our country bankrupted because something 'really does not look good at all?''
It means lot more people are going to die.
If you want to see what the alternative looks like look across the Atlantic. The US has now lost more people than they lost in WW1 and the Vietnam war combined. They are now losing the equivalent of a 9/11 every day.
That is slightly misleading as many of those who will have died are over 80 and would have died even without Covid
Everyone dies. Eventually.
Please read the statistics on life expectancy. COVID, even among the elderly has cut decades off peoples lives. Decades.
Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life.
This one.
That's provably untrue. Average life expectancy is only a couple of years over 80.
Not at 80 it isn't.
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
The average life expectancy of an 80 year old in the UK is about nine years for men and ten years for women, according to this handy ONS tool that it took me about ten seconds to Google:
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Who gives a fuck about your electoral positioning vs The Nigel.
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
The over 80s seem to think they have perfect right to ten more golden years, whatever the sacrifices the young have to make and more to the point future generations have to make, struggling under the yoke of enormous debts at every stage of their lives. This after they have enjoyed far more life than any generation, ever, already?
Are those years being bought at far, far too high a price? I would argue the answer is a resounding yes.
Its the modern equivalent of sending the young people over the top at the Somme.
Anthem for Doomed Youth 2, the sequel.
More sloppy thinking. The balance of risk is difficult, but it's not a given that opening up the country is the best course of action. The NHS mustn't be overwhelmed by Covid victims, if that happens we ALL will suffer, young, middle aged and old. It's not either/or it's much more nuanced and I don't envy those making the decisions. I wish them well in getting it right.
Apart from the fact that the "Doomed youth" may/may not be a bit poorer. They won't be... dead or maimed.
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Who gives a fuck about your electoral positioning vs The Nigel.
People are dying.
Businesses are collapsing.
And you are worried about the 2024 election
Fake news.
He is worried about the 2021 shire elections.
🙄
But not the 2021 Scottish elections, because Mr Johnson will just say no. Apparently.
Anyway I'm off to do some work. Did @MattW like his pickled herring, I wonder?
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
The over 80s seem to think they have perfect right to ten more golden years, whatever the sacrifices the young have to make and more to the point future generations have to make, struggling under the yoke of enormous debts at every stage of their lives. This after they have enjoyed far more life than any generation, ever, already?
Are those years being bought at far, far too high a price? I would argue the answer is a resounding yes.
Its the modern equivalent of sending the young people over the top at the Somme.
Anthem for Doomed Youth 2, the sequel.
More sloppy thinking. The balance of risk is difficult, but it's not a given that opening up the country is the best course of action. The NHS mustn't be overwhelmed by Covid victims, if that happens we ALL will suffer, young, middle aged and old. It's not either/or it's much more nuanced and I don't envy those making the decisions. I wish them well in getting it right.
Could we not isolate all the 75 pluses more or less completely?
The rest of us could get on with creating enough wealth to avoid the worst of this.
Look at the numbers if you dare. We are going bankrupt.
How will you feel when the NHS cannot afford the drugs and other expensive treatments I know from your posts you rely on?
Because that situation will kill you a lot faster and a lot surer than COVID. And millions more beside you.
Clearly you’re just posting the contrarian position to highlight it’s illogicality, but ill bite. If Covid were not dealt with, the NHS would be unable to provide those other treatments as hospitals Etc would be full of Covid patients.
Unless you’re advocating some sort of Viking style solution where the Covid-infirm are sent into the mountains to die?
How can the timing of their report be seen as anything other than telling the UK governmet negotiators "You MUST accept whatever is on the table from the EU"?
Once again Brexiteers outraged by a statement of the bleeding obvious.
We need a deal. It must be done now.
Neither of these statements is controversial, unless your head is up your ass.
But "it must be done now" is only because the Johnson/Cummings/Gove dream team refuse to even consider an additional extension due to the covid crisis.
Any half rational person facing the situation we are in would roll these discussions on until this time next year. It would still be completed well in time for 2024 when Johnson faces the voters again.
We needed a deal months ago. Even if one materialises tomorrow Q1 21 will be fucked.
Yep. When the deal is announced it will be clear it could easily have been done months ago. The last minute shenanigans aspect - and maintaining the public and commentariat fear of no deal - is to help Johnson politically. It will create relief and the optics of battling to the wire with the EU and late concessions being wrung. Also a deal announced a long time before end of Transition would have given more time for critical scrutiny of the detail, not something Johnson would welcome. So, sure, it makes sense from Johnson's point of view to do things this way. It's objectively crazy, though, and unfair on many people. As you say, and as Rochdale's post explains, the effect is to inject the "Deal" outcome with some of the chaos of "No Deal".
I could not disagree more.
Yes a deal "could" have been agreed months ago but more importantly one "could not" as without time pressure neither side would compromise. It is why to do it any other way is objectively crazy because to do it any other way means like May/Robbins you're the only one that compromises.
Asking for an extension as rottenborough and others have suggested is crazy too because again it would just remove the pressure and the can would be kicked.
I don't often agree with Guy Verhofstadt but completely agree with him the other day when he said compromises are only ever made at the last minute and "if you give extra time to politicians they will take all that extra time and still only compromise at the last minute".
No - THIS deal could have been done months ago. The reason it wasn't is primarily for the reasons I explained.
No.
THIS deal could NOT have been done months ago since the EU have moved in recent months under the time pressure. And they may likely still move again.
If we move back months ago how would you get the EU to move? Why wouldn't Barnier do what he did under Robbins and May and just take British movements while standing firm?
The narrative Johnson wants is exactly this. That by making the EU take "no deal" seriously and taking negotiations to the wire, we have forced them to make serious concessions which were otherwise not achievable. He'll be pleased - and not a little relieved - that Leavers such as yourself are buying into this. He'll be hoping that some agnostics and even some Remainers will too. We will see. Not long to wait now.
It is the truth.
How could he have gotten the EU to move prematurely? They never have done that? May failed to do that, Robbins failed to do that, Frost and Johnson were unable to do that months ago. It is only now that they're moving.
Mmm. As I say, it would be quite something if YOU didn't view the mainly fictional Johnson narrative as The Truth. More interesting will be how many of the less committed Johnsonite Leavers do. I predict take-up there will be significantly less than 100% - albeit still fairly high. But we're in the usual loop so I think "move" is indeed the word. For both of us. As in "on". TBC when the deal is announced.
Forget me let's talk about YOU.
Months ago the EU were adamant that there could be no change in quotas. In recent weeks they've accepted the idea of 18% but no more.
So if the final deal is 18% then that is movement from months ago isn't it?
Whereas if the final deal is over 18% that's movement in the final days of negotiations.
Do you accept that or are you denying that the EU have moved? Would you deny the EU have moved further?
Are you putting YOUR credibility on the line?
Sounding a bit frantic here, Philip. There's absolutely no rush on this. We'll give the Deal a really good thrashing, you and I, when it's announced. That's a promise. And don't worry, nobody's credibility is on the line. Not mine and certainly not yours. This is not about your credibility it's about your credulity.
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
Can I just say that at 81 and 76 my wife and I are not considering ourselves but the idea the NHS may well be overwhelmed with all the consequences for everyone needing urgent cancer and other care is a nightmare and everything should be done to stop us descending into that nightmare
And I am not criminalising you and to be honest your tone is a wee bit over the top
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Who gives a fuck about your electoral positioning vs The Nigel.
People are dying.
Businesses are collapsing.
And you are worried about the 2024 election
High street business are also being destroyed and more will be destroyed by endless lockdowns and high tiers, particularly in the hospitality sector and mental health is suffering too by enforced isolation from friends and family.
Restricting covid cases even to the extent of cancelling Christmas does not come without cost
Look at the numbers if you dare. We are going bankrupt.
How will you feel when the NHS cannot afford the drugs and other expensive treatments I know from your posts you rely on?
Because that situation will kill you a lot faster and a lot surer than COVID. And millions more beside you.
Clearly you’re just posting the contrarian position to highlight it’s illogicality, but ill bite. If Covid were not dealt with, the NHS would be unable to provide those other treatments as hospitals Etc would be full of Covid patients.
Unless you’re advocating some sort of Viking style solution where the Covid-infirm are sent into the mountains to die?
Er...sorry have you not read the news?
The NHS in many cases isn;t providing those treatments anyway, even with lockdown land.
Have you not read the stats on missed cancer diagnosis, cancelled operations, etc? For most people, the NHS may as well be overwhelmed, such is the deterioration in their service.
If we got the chance to earn a few quid maybe we could pay for the NHS to be expanded a bit. No chance now.
How can the timing of their report be seen as anything other than telling the UK governmet negotiators "You MUST accept whatever is on the table from the EU"?
Once again Brexiteers outraged by a statement of the bleeding obvious.
We need a deal. It must be done now.
Neither of these statements is controversial, unless your head is up your ass.
But "it must be done now" is only because the Johnson/Cummings/Gove dream team refuse to even consider an additional extension due to the covid crisis.
Any half rational person facing the situation we are in would roll these discussions on until this time next year. It would still be completed well in time for 2024 when Johnson faces the voters again.
We needed a deal months ago. Even if one materialises tomorrow Q1 21 will be fucked.
Yep. When the deal is announced it will be clear it could easily have been done months ago. The last minute shenanigans aspect - and maintaining the public and commentariat fear of no deal - is to help Johnson politically. It will create relief and the optics of battling to the wire with the EU and late concessions being wrung. Also a deal announced a long time before end of Transition would have given more time for critical scrutiny of the detail, not something Johnson would welcome. So, sure, it makes sense from Johnson's point of view to do things this way. It's objectively crazy, though, and unfair on many people. As you say, and as Rochdale's post explains, the effect is to inject the "Deal" outcome with some of the chaos of "No Deal".
I could not disagree more.
Yes a deal "could" have been agreed months ago but more importantly one "could not" as without time pressure neither side would compromise. It is why to do it any other way is objectively crazy because to do it any other way means like May/Robbins you're the only one that compromises.
Asking for an extension as rottenborough and others have suggested is crazy too because again it would just remove the pressure and the can would be kicked.
I don't often agree with Guy Verhofstadt but completely agree with him the other day when he said compromises are only ever made at the last minute and "if you give extra time to politicians they will take all that extra time and still only compromise at the last minute".
No - THIS deal could have been done months ago. The reason it wasn't is primarily for the reasons I explained.
No.
THIS deal could NOT have been done months ago since the EU have moved in recent months under the time pressure. And they may likely still move again.
If we move back months ago how would you get the EU to move? Why wouldn't Barnier do what he did under Robbins and May and just take British movements while standing firm?
The narrative Johnson wants is exactly this. That by making the EU take "no deal" seriously and taking negotiations to the wire, we have forced them to make serious concessions which were otherwise not achievable. He'll be pleased - and not a little relieved - that Leavers such as yourself are buying into this. He'll be hoping that some agnostics and even some Remainers will too. We will see. Not long to wait now.
It is the truth.
How could he have gotten the EU to move prematurely? They never have done that? May failed to do that, Robbins failed to do that, Frost and Johnson were unable to do that months ago. It is only now that they're moving.
Mmm. As I say, it would be quite something if YOU didn't view the mainly fictional Johnson narrative as The Truth. More interesting will be how many of the less committed Johnsonite Leavers do. I predict take-up there will be significantly less than 100% - albeit still fairly high. But we're in the usual loop so I think "move" is indeed the word. For both of us. As in "on". TBC when the deal is announced.
Forget me let's talk about YOU.
Months ago the EU were adamant that there could be no change in quotas. In recent weeks they've accepted the idea of 18% but no more.
So if the final deal is 18% then that is movement from months ago isn't it?
Whereas if the final deal is over 18% that's movement in the final days of negotiations.
Do you accept that or are you denying that the EU have moved? Would you deny the EU have moved further?
Are you putting YOUR credibility on the line?
Sounding a bit frantic here, Philip. There's absolutely no rush on this. We'll give the Deal a really good thrashing, you and I, when it's announced. That's a promise. And don't worry, nobody's credibility is on the line. Not mine and certainly not yours. This is not about your credibility it's about your credulity.
So you aren't prepared to acknowledge where the EU are now or where they were months ago. Got you.
So let's rephrase. If the EU agree a deal with a different position to what they're saying month ago then that was not the deal available months ago - agreed?
Sorry if I seem rude but I am fed up with this view and I consider it to be crassly selfish. The lives of young people have been fucked enough in the last 12 years to ensure asset prices and pension incomes for baby boomers and above are protected. If you have such a poor understanding of risk that you remain scared of your own shadow then lock yourself up by all means. But don’t you dare criminalise me for exhibiting entirely sensible risk based behaviour, or expect me to celebrate any further interruption to my kids lives so you can feel less scared at night.
Can I just say that at 81 and 76 my wife and I are not considering ourselves but the idea the NHS may well be overwhelmed with all the consequences for everyone needing urgent cancer and other care is a nightmare and everything should be done to stop us descending into that nightmare
And I am not criminalising you and to be honest your tone is a wee bit over the top
In my family, the kids are getting the presents, the tree etc.
No big family get together - but hey, a big family meal isn't that impossible to arrange, in say June.
I am having a lot of trouble seeing this as other than a bit annoying.
Mind you I *have* run out of Grand Cru. So I am left with Premier Cru for Christmas. And some ancient Tokaji...
Look at the numbers if you dare. We are going bankrupt.
How will you feel when the NHS cannot afford the drugs and other expensive treatments I know from your posts you rely on?
Because that situation will kill you a lot faster and a lot surer than COVID. And millions more beside you.
Clearly you’re just posting the contrarian position to highlight it’s illogicality, but ill bite. If Covid were not dealt with, the NHS would be unable to provide those other treatments as hospitals Etc would be full of Covid patients.
Unless you’re advocating some sort of Viking style solution where the Covid-infirm are sent into the mountains to die?
Surely we could combine this with other matters - send the oldies into battle against the Scots/French/Spanish?
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Farage is irrelevant.
He won't be come the New Year if Boris cancels Christmas and we are all then back to lockdown in January, if he then compromises with the EU to get a trade deal, as he would likely have to, then Farage would see the biggest comeback since Lazarus
It would be well received everywhere outside SE England.
Not greatly either as the report says outside London and SE England you could only travel on Christmas Day and with no overnight stay, so Christmas Eve and Boxing Day would be cancelled across England and Christmas Day too cancelled in London and the SE.
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
Farage is irrelevant.
He won't be come the New Year if Boris cancels Christmas and we are all then back to lockdown in January, if he then compromises with the EU to get a trade deal, as he would likely have to, then Farage would see the biggest comeback since Lazarus
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54908177
UK average life expectancy is 81
Public safety is number 1
I didn’t know there were Elves in America....
Ask an actuarial what life expectancy at birth is versus life expectancy at 80. 🤦🏻♂️
How bad is the new strain?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-09/covid-19-was-in-italy-in-late-november-2019-new-report-shows
You are showing a complete misunderstanding which has been explained several times on PB. Basically, those who are 80 are going to live a lot longer than 1 year on average, because they have already survived to the age of 80 and the ones who died before then are not counted any more in the calculation of the average.
Look at the numbers if you dare. We are going bankrupt.
How will you feel when the NHS cannot afford the drugs and other expensive treatments I know from your posts you rely on?
Because that situation will kill you a lot faster and a lot surer than COVID. And millions more beside you.
So, the pb.com Skiing Club -- compromised mainly of elderly pb-ers getting an early vaccine & saying they were fine to go skiing in Italy in February -- are actually being characteristically selfish.
They're seeding a whole lot more infections.
Just hold on folks - the cavalry are on their way. And boy, are they needed....
The biggest winner would be Farage and his new Reform UK Party, a lot of traditional Tories would be furious at this if correct, pub and restaurant owners are already angry at the fact they have now had to shut shop again bar takeaways in most of the country.
On average at birth someone has a chance of dying from a childhood illness, or a driving accident as a young adult, or suicide as a young adult etc etc etc that the 80 year old can't die from as they have already survived all.of those potentially fatal incidents.
If an actuarial used life expectancy at birth for the retired they'd become bankrupt pretty damn quick.
I think we just might be Christmas number one.
For an 80 year old male the average life expectancy is 89, for a female it's 90 (and a 1 in 10 chance of living to 98).
You're probably thinking of average life expectancy at a younger age (birth?) which takes into account those who die as babies, teeneagers, middle aged etc. Sloppy thinking, Mr Contrarian.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07
It is bloody needed but it mustn't even appear to be politicised.
Approval asap but at a separate press conference.
What do scientists know anyway? It took a genius like Trump to point the way to the bleach injection cure.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07
That's that argument sorted, at least
Printing for an emergency is different to doing it consistently.
This after they have enjoyed far more life than any generation, ever, already?
Are those years being bought at far, far too high a price? I would argue the answer is a resounding yes.
Its the modern equivalent of sending the young people over the top at the Somme.
Anthem for Doomed Youth 2, the sequel.
And a Calvinist would have different emphases, too.
People are dying.
Businesses are collapsing.
And you are worried about the 2024 election
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07
Not everyone who dies is over 80 too.
Feels to me we are pissing on our own foot, celebrating and mourning the natural ebbs and flows of the virus through the seasons and each cluster increase and burnout the way the ancients prayed to the sun.
Show me EVIDENCE that lockdowns as practiced in western democracies makes a blind bit of difference.
Six points clear at the top.
Wealth will be able to drain out of the fiat system at much quicker rates, as people strive to avoid the gargantuan tax bills that will follow this insanity. Its already happening, but you can probably add a nought to whatever crypto prices are now in the coming years anyway.
The balance of risk is difficult, but it's not a given that opening up the country is the best course of action. The NHS mustn't be overwhelmed by Covid victims, if that happens we ALL will suffer, young, middle aged and old.
It's not either/or it's much more nuanced and I don't envy those making the decisions. I wish them well in getting it right.
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Life+expectancy+at+80+in+the+Uk
You can adjust for different starting ages as well.
I hope the people dealing with this crisis have a better grasp of statistics.
1-9 is years
10-99 is decades
100-999 is centuries
1000-9999 is thousands
And so on.
Suppose both that most of England outside the South East is permitted to proceed with the nutty Christmas plan, and that the Government continues to insist on bringing back the schools. The effect of any measures that are implemented is then likely to be very limited.
He is worried about the 2021 shire elections.
🙄
Anyway I'm off to do some work. Did @MattW like his pickled herring, I wonder?
The rest of us could get on with creating enough wealth to avoid the worst of this.
Unless you’re advocating some sort of Viking style solution where the Covid-infirm are sent into the mountains to die?
And I really disagree
1 year = a year
1-2 years = over a year
2-9 years = years
10 years = a decade
10-19 = over a decade
20-90 = decades
etc
And I am not criminalising you and to be honest your tone is a wee bit over the top
Restricting covid cases even to the extent of cancelling Christmas does not come without cost
Especially since many are dying at 60 or 70 and life expectancy at 60 is definitely decades on average.
The NHS in many cases isn;t providing those treatments anyway, even with lockdown land.
Have you not read the stats on missed cancer diagnosis, cancelled operations, etc? For most people, the NHS may as well be overwhelmed, such is the deterioration in their service.
If we got the chance to earn a few quid maybe we could pay for the NHS to be expanded a bit. No chance now.
Of course, the way that battle was fought, the battle could have come to his camp ground.
So let's rephrase. If the EU agree a deal with a different position to what they're saying month ago then that was not the deal available months ago - agreed?
No big family get together - but hey, a big family meal isn't that impossible to arrange, in say June.
I am having a lot of trouble seeing this as other than a bit annoying.
Mind you I *have* run out of Grand Cru. So I am left with Premier Cru for Christmas. And some ancient Tokaji...
Can I get compensation?
So isolating on Christmas either way for us now.
"Sorry but in what universe can 80 somethings depend upon 'decades' of life."
With;
"This one."
Because that sounds to me like you think that 80 somethings have a life expectancy over 100