I mean it is fine to pay attention to Sumption on say jurisprudence but not so much when it comes to epidemiological issues because of his epistemological problems.
It does seem unfortunate that he is both sound and persuasive in several fields, but then makes truly basic errors of fact and logic that far less competent laymen are able to avoid on this issue, on which he is a layman himself.
Da fing is, you can't jurisprude in a vacuum. A minority of cases he will have presented or adjudicated on will have been pure law, chancery kinda stuff, but most big cases which make it to the supreme court involve expert scientific evudence on one thing or another which the court has to understand and adjudicate on. So you are left wondering what other bloopers he has committed.
Ah, but he won't have jurispruded alone in those cases, which is presumably part of the point to iron out the impact of basic misunderstandings, since you'd hope at least one of them would grasp such things and ensure the others do.
I don't think people really do stereotype the west country anymore. They just forget we exist outside the holiday homes in Cornwall. Most of us don't even have silly rural accents, which probably upsets the media.
Come back to me in a few weeks, we will regret not taking action now.
Time to lockdown the entirety of England.
I think the regional approach is better. I think that is how many countries have faced this issue. Locking down the entire country because of an outbreak in one area is a bit of overkill.
The Tier system has comprehensively failed. It's time to accept that.
Yet it works in other countries. Shutting down the entire country for an outbreak in one part is not the answer.
It's not an outbreak in one place, it's spreading everywhere.
You have your point of view, I think it's going to come to be a very poor one. We will see.
Then that argues for an adjustment to the restrictions in each region. It doesn't mean one size fits all.
I think a regional approach simply doesn't work, as I said, we will see.
The regional approach worked ok in Scotland. The problem is that the increased transmissibility of the new virus renders anything below tier 4 insufficient to keep R below 1, so I agree it needs to be tier 4 everywhere now.
And the jury is out on whether tier 4 is enough. Good job it will effectively be tier 5 for the next couple weeks due to the school holidays. God help us if that's not enough.
My amateur hunch, from reading the various expert views, is that Tier 4/5 will not be enough. Supercovid is that bad. I fervently pray I am wrong.
If I am right we are in for a horrific winter, until the vaccines really start to kick in, around March/April, when a significant proportion of the country will be invulnerable and the virus will find it harder and harder to spread
Um. Supercovid can't leap through walls.
If we all stay at home it can't spread.
The higher R is largely down to a longer asymptomatic period.
It hasn't grown legs.
But that’s exactly it. The only answer is Ultra-lockdown, a la Wuhan, where you weld everyone into their homes for several months. Is that do-able in a western democracy? I guess it will have to be, if it’s the only choice.
But wow. You can see why any politician - of any flavour - would be reluctant to go down that road.
That's impossible. I would suggest that the end state would be a lockdown almost the same as that in March and April, where people are allowed out of their homes only for work (if it can't be done from home,) for essential shopping, to attend medical appointments and for exercise. The main difference being that, now we've established that outdoor settings are very much safer than indoors, and that (socially distanced) outdoor exercise is good for physical and mental health, people should be encouraged to do as much of that as possible - crap weather allowing - and that should include shielders, who previously were effectively welded up inside their homes. And education must go back online, except for the relatively small numbers of children who could still be sent to school under the arrangements in force last Spring.
If that's not sufficient to stop the thing in its tracks, or at least slow it down enough to limit the damage whilst we race to get the vaccinations completed, then we're stuffed.
Lockdown 1 - in the Spring - got R down to 0.8. If the pessimistic take on Supercovid is correct, and the new variant increases R by 0.4-0.9 (and likely nearer 0.9) your lockdown would not be enough. Plenty of key workers would still have to leave home (we are not all lawyers or bankers) they would get infected, they will then hit the hospitals, and the health system crashes.
As I say, let’s hope the pessimistic take is very wrong.
The big difference between now and last March is the vaccines. Hopefully AstraZeneca willl be approved just after Xmas. That releases millions of jabs, and will offer real cause for cautious and guarded optimism
I was under the impression that the estimate was an increase in R0. That is, from 3 to 3.4-3.9.
If the spring lockdown reduced R from 3 to 0.8, then it reduced it by a factor of 3.75.
That equates to 0.90-1.04.
That’s doable.
DID the Spring lockdown reduce R from 3 to 0.8?
Genuine Q. I have no idea
That was the sort of figure suggested in early summer.
I expect she'll apologise and that'll be that. It's a minor breach.
In the rail industry, the estimate is that wearing masks halves the chances of transmitting the virus. Not sure about a location like that, but I doubt it's that different. Quite frankly, she should resign, but won't.
NHS leaders have raised concerns about the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, with more than half of hospital trusts and two-thirds of GPs yet to receive supplies amid growing alarm over the new fast-spreading variant.
Dr Richard Vautrey, the chair of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, urged the government to speed up delivery of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in order to save lives. Experts also demanded greater transparency from ministers on how many doses are available.
Vautrey said: “We need millions of doses to be made available as soon as possible – urgently – because it’s the number one priority for GP practices, our patients and the nation, especially given the new mutant strain.
“GPs who haven’t got it yet are frustrated because they want to be getting on and vaccinating their patients as well. Their frustration is understandable. They want to protect their patients, especially their vulnerable patients, as quickly as possible.”
Hospital bosses in England are also dismayed that, a fortnight after Margaret Keenan from Coventry became the first person to have the jab on 8 December, more than half of the country’s 135 NHS acute hospital trusts have still not received their first supplies. So far 57 (42%) of them have had a delivery and been able to start vaccination, the Guardian understands.
As I said earlier, this is why the Government isn't making more of the success of the vaccine rollout. They actually appear to be making a decent fist of distributing the Pfizer jab, but there's not enough of it. When the regulator - we fervently hope - gives the green light to Oxford/AZN then it might have more success in getting deliveries to every hospital and surgery that needs them. Until then, the have-nots will inevitably moan loudly.
It could be worse. We could be Ireland. Thanks to their involvement in the brilliant EU vaccine scheme, Ireland will be receiving its first vaccines on the 30th December. All 10,000 doses.
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
Is there concern in Germany about the data now? The deaths and cases are beginning to stack up
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
Whilst she should have kept her mask on it was the wake of a funeral.
Why would it being a wake matter in any way?
I don't think people should resign for minor breaches of things, but I suspect a lot of politicians have said they think that in the past, and will be rolling back on that.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
Of course Supercovid is in the EU, it is inconceivable that it hasn’t crossed the Channel. They are just a few weeks behind us (or maybe not, looking at the figures now coming out of Germany, Italy, etc)
It's certainly going to be an awkward daily briefing for Sturgeon tomorrow. Actually, checking, I see it's FMQ's tomorrow I think, so a different awkward but awkward nevertheless.
Whilst she should have kept her mask on it was the wake of a funeral.
Please let the Yoons have their 5 minutes of hope that this might be a thing. It is almost Christmas after all.
I piled on Nicola Sturgeon to still be First Minister on Jan 1st 2021 at the start of the year so I am sensative to the things.
I believe PB Scotch experts strongly recommended taking the other side of the bet so Nic needs to be pure as driven snow about this otherwise my chance to be smug is ruined.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
Of course Supercovid is in the EU, it is inconceivable that it hasn’t crossed the Channel. They are just a few weeks behind us (or maybe not, looking at the figures now coming out of Germany, Italy, etc)
That's what I'm saying. Are they even behind us?
Deaths were fifty percent higher in Germany of all nations than here. Why?
Supercovid looks like a reasonable guess as to why.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
Is there concern in Germany about the data now? The deaths and cases are beginning to stack up
Yes, there is a lot of concern. The government seems to be taken more seriously here though. If anything the biggest mistake in the last couple of month was the 16 states overruling the feredral government and delaying for 2 weeks a tightening to the "lockdown light", which started on Nov 1st.
Whilst she should have kept her mask on it was the wake of a funeral.
Please let the Yoons have their 5 minutes of hope that this might be a thing. It is almost Christmas after all.
I piled on Nicola Sturgeon to still be First Minister on Jan 1st 2021 at the start of the year so I am sensative to the things.
I believe PB Scotch experts strongly recommended taking the other side of the bet so Nic needs to be pure as driven snow about this otherwise my chance to be smug is ruined.
I live to be smug.
Nobody likes a smug bastard, I feel I may have to give you lessons on how to be modest.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
Of course Supercovid is in the EU, it is inconceivable that it hasn’t crossed the Channel. They are just a few weeks behind us (or maybe not, looking at the figures now coming out of Germany, Italy, etc)
The current death figures correspond to the case levels from a few weeks ago. It's all going to get much worse when the supercovid rise filters through into deaths (unless the mutation has made it less lethal, for which there's no evidence so far).
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
Is there concern in Germany about the data now? The deaths and cases are beginning to stack up
Yes, there is a lot of concern. The government seems to be taken more seriously here though. If anything the biggest mistake in the last couple of month was the 16 states overruling the feredral government and delaying for 2 weeks a tightening to the "lockdown light", which started on Nov 1st.
Good luck. We all need it. I suspect you have Supercovid, and if you don’t, you soon will. We’re used to it now, over here. You get used to it eventually
*knocks back scotch with a worldly sigh*
If and when you go over 1,000 deaths a day, that will be a pivotal moment.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
Good grief! I assume that you don't live here. Nobody thinks we've had a "good" pandemic, if such a thing exists.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
The party established to represent the interests of working people. Not a bunch of tofu munching hand-wringers in Hampstead.
LOL. To paraphrase Brecht, much of the Labour membership would very much like to dissolve the current working class and replace it with another. The tofu munchers despise everything about them.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
In England some are adamant at insisting we are shit at everything.
Whilst she should have kept her mask on it was the wake of a funeral.
Please let the Yoons have their 5 minutes of hope that this might be a thing. It is almost Christmas after all.
I piled on Nicola Sturgeon to still be First Minister on Jan 1st 2021 at the start of the year so I am sensative to the things.
I believe PB Scotch experts strongly recommended taking the other side of the bet so Nic needs to be pure as driven snow about this otherwise my chance to be smug is ruined.
I live to be smug.
Nobody likes a smug bastard, I feel I may have to give you lessons on how to be modest.
The party established to represent the interests of working people. Not a bunch of tofu munching hand-wringers in Hampstead.
After the election The Secretary of the GMB Had articles distributed in the New Statesmen Stating that the people Had forfeited the confidence of the Party And could only win it back By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler for the Party To dissolve the people And elect another?
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
To back up my point, the first item on the German news at midnight was the collapse of the Israeli government, despite the record number of covid deaths in Germany today.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
Our negative nationalists are much better worse than anyone else's negative nationalists
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
To back up my point, the first item on the German news at midnight was the collapse of the Israeli government, despite the record number of covid deaths in Germany today.
That seems quite odd. To me. But I know from a friend who worked for German State TV that your media is quite bonkers, by British standards
The party established to represent the interests of working people. Not a bunch of tofu munching hand-wringers in Hampstead.
LOL. To paraphrase Brecht, much of the Labour membership would very much like to dissolve the current working class and replace it with another. The tofu munchers despise everything about them.
Great minds...
Orwell repeatedly warned that there was a chunk of intellectual socialism that thought the biggest problem was the working class. And that this could destroy the Labour movement....
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
To back up my point, the first item on the German news at midnight was the collapse of the Israeli government, despite the record number of covid deaths in Germany today.
I tend to assume at any given moment that the Israeli government is collapsing unless confirmed otherwise.
They had 3 elections in one year, so well done to stretching this one out for a whole year, if only due to election periods.
BTW. The German death figure, today - 944 - is a record for the country, by some distance.
I imagine tonight’s German TV news will NOT be dominated by Supercovid or Brexit lorries.
N501Y and the stranded lorries (they aren't Brexit lorries) are making the news, but you're right, it's not the headlines. Yesterday evening the headlines were life imprisonment for a terrorist attack on a synagogue a year ago. There are a few other things going on than just Covid and Brexit.
To back up my point, the first item on the German news at midnight was the collapse of the Israeli government, despite the record number of covid deaths in Germany today.
Priorities - they can see betting opportunities on another election.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
Our negative nationalists are much better worse than anyone else's negative nationalists
Exactly! And only an Englishman would phrase it so exceptionally well
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
Our negative nationalists are much better worse than anyone else's negative nationalists
Exactly! And only an Englishman would phrase it so exceptionally well
Well, God *is* an Englishman. As Admiral "Mad" Jack Fisher observed.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
Good grief! I assume that you don't live here. Nobody thinks we've had a "good" pandemic, if such a thing exists.
I have been in Berlin for the last 7 years, but am English and have lived in England for over 40 years. So yes I do realize that many English think Britain is shit at everything. But there are also very many English people who think that Britain is best at almost everything except for winter sports. That kind of blind patriotism vs antipatriotism is not common at all here (i want to make it clear that I'm not talking about the rise of the AfD and pegida which is something quite different)
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
Our negative nationalists are much better worse than anyone else's negative nationalists
Exactly! And only an Englishman would phrase it so exceptionally well
Well, God *is* an Englishman. As Admiral "Mad" Jack Fisher observed.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
Our negative nationalists are much better worse than anyone else's negative nationalists
Exactly! And only an Englishman would phrase it so exceptionally well
Well, God *is* an Englishman. As Admiral "Mad" Jack Fisher observed.
Was he the one whose epistolary style was indistinguishable from that of a California Valley Girl?
Chillax. In about a fortnight everywhere will be a hotspot. This is New Improved Ultracovid. This is what it does
Whole of England is going to Tier 4 28 Dec - to be announced 27 Dec
Will need to be in place to 28 Feb, and that will only work if Oxford AZ is approved this year ie next week.
Also schools closed until 28 Feb - government will announce 'on line' learning for part of Jan initially, will be extended to 28 Feb
Partial relaxations in March, maybe reduction to Tier 3 national, dependent on vaccine progress by 28 Feb.
Schools closed until 28 Feb?????? OMFG
Personally, that is awful news. I hope you are wrong, I fear you could be right
These are only my predictions. We need to close the schools as they are driving this. With usual exceptions for children of key workers etc.
Seconded. It'll be God awful for working parents, and also for those children whose domestic circumstances are crap, but the sooner it's done the sooner it's over.
As I've said before, if there were no vaccine and no imminent prospect of one then we'd have to attempt risk segmentation or other strategies to try to live with this thing, because we can't go on with lockdown cycles ad infinitum. But there is a highly effective vaccine, with a prospect of one that's much easier to administer and available in larger quantities coming round the next corner.
The end is in sight, even if it is still a fairly distant prospect that is going to make a locked down Winter bloody miserable for everybody. Letting the virus run amok in the schools and bring down the healthcare system isn't justified by any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
Are you still in 1940? I'm curious where this idea about England comes from.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Leon - I don't want to be gloomy but if we get to 100,000 maybe 200,000 cases a day and maybe 100,000 deaths Q1 2020 that is going to be a 'brutal blow' to everyone!
It's not just about 'saving the old', 100,000 dead and many more with long COVID often young is not a good idea. For most children having two months at home won't make a difference, it's a long time since I went to school but I know 80% of the time there is wasted/spent on pointless things so there will be no real learning loss.
The party established to represent the interests of working people. Not a bunch of tofu munching hand-wringers in Hampstead.
LOL. To paraphrase Brecht, much of the Labour membership would very much like to dissolve the current working class and replace it with another. The tofu munchers despise everything about them.
Great minds...
Orwell repeatedly warned that there was a chunk of intellectual socialism that thought the biggest problem was the working class. And that this could destroy the Labour movement....
He also repeatedly condemned the anti intellectualism of the British ruling class.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Leon - I don't want to be gloomy but if we get to 100,000 maybe 200,000 cases a day and maybe 100,000 deaths Q1 2020 that is going to be a 'brutal blow' to everyone!
It's not just about 'saving the old', 100,000 dead and many more with long COVID often young is not a good idea. For most children having two months at home won't make a difference, it's a long time since I went to school but I know 80% of the time there is wasted/spent on pointless things so there will be no real learning loss.
Much better to bring in very regular testing for kids and teachers. And keep the schools open thereby
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Leon - I don't want to be gloomy but if we get to 100,000 maybe 200,000 cases a day and maybe 100,000 deaths Q1 2020 that is going to be a 'brutal blow' to everyone!
It's not just about 'saving the old', 100,000 dead and many more with long COVID often young is not a good idea. For most children having two months at home won't make a difference, it's a long time since I went to school but I know 80% of the time there is wasted/spent on pointless things so there will be no real learning loss.
Much better to bring in very regular testing for kids and teachers. And keep the schools open thereby
Fair point - but then you are reliant on the government organising it properly...
Also you have the problem of parents spreading it between themselves as they congregate outside of school before and after lessons as of course nowadays children can't walk to school - in my day children got themselves to school, perfectly safely!
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
English exceptionaiism is odd. We certainly have a class of people who think we are exceptionally good, clever, brave, democratic, free, resourceful, ancient, glorious, and so on. Yet we have another class of people - generally richer, probably larger in number - that believes we are exceptionally evil, crap, gauche, racist, supremacist, silly, inept, bigoted and snobbish.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
No - it's just that negative nationalism is rarely noted by people *outside* the country in question.
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
But Orwell correctly noted that the English are exceptional in this respect.
Our negative nationalists are much better worse than anyone else's negative nationalists
Exactly! And only an Englishman would phrase it so exceptionally well
Well, God *is* an Englishman. As Admiral "Mad" Jack Fisher observed.
Was he the one whose epistolary style was indistinguishable from that of a California Valley Girl?
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Leon - I don't want to be gloomy but if we get to 100,000 maybe 200,000 cases a day and maybe 100,000 deaths Q1 2020 that is going to be a 'brutal blow' to everyone!
It's not just about 'saving the old', 100,000 dead and many more with long COVID often young is not a good idea. For most children having two months at home won't make a difference, it's a long time since I went to school but I know 80% of the time there is wasted/spent on pointless things so there will be no real learning loss.
You seem to be making a pretty compelling case for just closing the schools permanently.
It's not about two months though is it, it's that plus the three months earlier this year plus the disruption in between. Plus the distinction between secondary schools and primary schools where disruption at such a formative age is even more keenly felt.
To me the school closure calls always have the same problem. It's easy to see why it may well need to be done but one rarely, if ever, sees any call to close the schools that explains how that time could (or should) be made back up.
We have to assume that online/blended learning is only at best a partial replacement for in-person teaching, particularly at the younger age brackets or in areas where access to online materials will be more difficult, and therefore the time spent physically out of school needs to be made back up somewhere.
Calls to close schools would be more compelling if that was addressed within them, even excepting the many other good reasons to avoid it if possible.
I see the ridiculous gaslighting continues. The people who are responsible for Brexit are those who voted and/or campaigned for Cameron, Brexit, May and Johnson. No-one else. Brexit is yours, for better or worse. For God's sake, have the guts to own it.
It's pretty silly, indeed raving bonkers, to blame the one person who campaigned vigorously for Remain for Brexit. And also pretty silly to blame those who voted for Theresa May: Brexit had already been decided by then, and if she had had the majority she asked for and needed, she'd have been able to deliver it in the sensible way she was planning, without Labour and other opposition parties helping (and actively voting with) the ERG to torpedo it.
I'll grant you the other two categories.
Cameron's idea of campaigning for Remain was to spend years slagging off the EU to prove he was down with the Eurosceptics, and then bully people into voting for his deal by threatening them with the abyss if they didn't. He's one of the most disastrous Prime Ministers in history.
Poppycock. That's like blaming the solicitor who advises you against a bad purchase for the bad purchase you decide to make.
Cameron remain the best Prime Minister, apart from the very special case of Maggie, for at least a half century, in the sense that he ran the country and the government better than any other PM. It's completely absurd to blame him for decisions made by others - not least, voters.
If people want to make an argument that he should never have permitted the question to be asked, that is one thing, but it really goes too far when every thing that happens as a result of voters doing the opposite of what he said is suggested as his direct responsibility. That's like taking literally the joke of holding Eric Joyce responsible for everything that has occurred since because it led to Corbyn or whatever.
I agree with you to a certain extent. I think that there are two problems though.
The first is that it was his failure to secure meaningful reform of the British relationship with the EU that led to the Leave vote.
The second is that he refused to make any preparation for the possibility of a Leave vote and then as soon as it happened he walked away as if it were nothing to do with him.
I actually like Cameron both as a person and generally as a PM. He did a couple of very important things, not least Gay Marriage. But it is simply not realistic to claim that he was not responsible at least in part for both the referendum result (though of course I was glad of that) and its aftermath.
Interesting thoughts, Richard.
My take is that Juncker was extremely inflexible, underestimated Cameron's difficulties, and only much later realised that in forcing him into a corner he was not only creating the conditions for Brexit but was putting the entire EU project at risk.
How does that sound to you?
The rest of your post I buy, except of course that I come from the Europhile camp.
I am never sure what to make of Junker. He was an easy target for scorn and clearly had something of a problem with the old tipple at times but he was also generally very astute. Again he was fighting for his (the EU's) corner so it hardly seems fair to criticise him if he did that too well. The problem was, as you say, that he didn't foresee the consequences of his hardball position.
I have always had more of a soft spot for the EU characters than our own Europhile cadre. Mostly because they are generally honest about what the EU is about and what membership means. Something to many UK politicians have consistently tried to avoid making explicit.
It is rather concerning that while we are trying to deal with Supercovid the deaths yesterday in Germany were 50% higher than in the UK.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
At the moment, we don't know who the "index case" was - the person from which the mutated version of the virus first emerged.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
But unlike England, Germany does not think it is outstanding at everything.
Good grief! I assume that you don't live here. Nobody thinks we've had a "good" pandemic, if such a thing exists.
I have been in Berlin for the last 7 years, but am English and have lived in England for over 40 years. So yes I do realize that many English think Britain is shit at everything. But there are also very many English people who think that Britain is best at almost everything except for winter sports. That kind of blind patriotism vs antipatriotism is not common at all here (i want to make it clear that I'm not talking about the rise of the AfD and pegida which is something quite different)
English exeptionalism is a cancer in this country. It's why we are Brexiting.
The party established to represent the interests of working people. Not a bunch of tofu munching hand-wringers in Hampstead.
LOL. To paraphrase Brecht, much of the Labour membership would very much like to dissolve the current working class and replace it with another. The tofu munchers despise everything about them.
Great minds...
Orwell repeatedly warned that there was a chunk of intellectual socialism that thought the biggest problem was the working class. And that this could destroy the Labour movement....
He also repeatedly condemned the anti intellectualism of the British ruling class.
That too - but his main concern seems to have been keeping the socialist movement "real" - in the sense of connected to actual people.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Again, the myth that children are being cruelly sacrificed to grant demented octogenarians an extra six months of life.
The issue isn't that we must save the elderly at any cost, it's that if the disease makes enough people sick at once then the healthcare system will implode, and take down anybody - young and old alike - who needs treatment for everything.
The Government has striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost. Almost. They're prepared to shut down the whole of hospitality, any retailers we can get by without, leisure facilities which benefit millions by providing health-improving exercise and force extended families to stay physically apart for months on end, as well as to ruin people's Christmas plans at the last minute - and yet, the Tier 4 advice still permits in-person tuition to continue. It will be practically the last thing to go. Nobody wants it to go. If it wasn't absolutely necessary then I wouldn't want it to go.
This all comes down to a calculation about how many people have to suffer and die in order that kids can keep going to school, which is the sort of trade off we make all the time in society. A certain number of people, including children of course, die on the roads every year because we don't reimpose the Red Flag Act. The social benefits of saving those lives would be outweighed by the damage caused to others, so we let them die. It's simply my contention that making children put up with remote learning for two, three, four months is less bad than the consequences of allowing schools to resume their function as coronavirus petri dishes, when the disease is running rampant in large swathes of the land and the new variant is liable to spread everywhere in the fullness of time. It's the least worst option.
There was that FT chart showing Wales' rather bad position wrt Covid. Did that chat take into account the additional cases that were added in bulk recently. That may be making it look far worse than it actually is?
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier - Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4. - Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3. - No areas to remain in T1. - Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities: - Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3. - The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing). - Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode. - Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
If the principal remaining causes of transmission are supermarket shopping and schools, and we cannot stop the former because the home delivery capacity of the nation won't keep everybody fed, then why don't we simply dispense with the game of kiddie hokey-cokey and go back to remote learning?
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
You do realise there are kids who desperately NEED school, not just for learning, but for socialising, maturing, interacting, growing up? Blithely closing down the schools, for months at a time, is mad. And doing it to save the old?
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
Leon - I don't want to be gloomy but if we get to 100,000 maybe 200,000 cases a day and maybe 100,000 deaths Q1 2020 that is going to be a 'brutal blow' to everyone!
It's not just about 'saving the old', 100,000 dead and many more with long COVID often young is not a good idea. For most children having two months at home won't make a difference, it's a long time since I went to school but I know 80% of the time there is wasted/spent on pointless things so there will be no real learning loss.
You seem to be making a pretty compelling case for just closing the schools permanently.
It's not about two months though is it, it's that plus the three months earlier this year plus the disruption in between. Plus the distinction between secondary schools and primary schools where disruption at such a formative age is even more keenly felt.
To me the school closure calls always have the same problem. It's easy to see why it may well need to be done but one rarely, if ever, sees any call to close the schools that explains how that time could (or should) be made back up.
We have to assume that online/blended learning is only at best a partial replacement for in-person teaching, particularly at the younger age brackets or in areas where access to online materials will be more difficult, and therefore the time spent physically out of school needs to be made back up somewhere.
Calls to close schools would be more compelling if that was addressed within them, even excepting the many other good reasons to avoid it if possible.
Just for two months only ie to 28 Feb ie really six weeks, as suggested by me, if we can get all 65+ vaccinated by 28 Feb that reduces the exposure sufficiently.
Noted re primary schools and the exposure there ie primary schools appears to be less so maybe keep them open.
In general though in terms of learning the 'lost' summer term 2019/2020 and first half term Q1 2020/2021 would really make very little difference.
Comments
R from hospitalisations
Hope that isn't the message that is getting through on a wider basis. It's not instant.
So it's going to be the French's fault for No Deal, can't be the UK, we're never to blame for anything!
https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1264573806040973318
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-55419564
She better hope no one comes forward to contradict the briefly bit.
In most other European countries too deaths have been worse in the second wave than here.
Yet supposedly we are plague island? I am really concerned this virus is sweeping through the Continent and they simply don't know and are stabbing in the dark.
I had my mask off briefly
I don't think people should resign for minor breaches of things, but I suspect a lot of politicians have said they think that in the past, and will be rolling back on that.
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/1341468560116371458?s=19
I believe PB Scotch experts strongly recommended taking the other side of the bet so Nic needs to be pure as driven snow about this otherwise my chance to be smug is ruined.
I live to be smug.
Deaths were fifty percent higher in Germany of all nations than here. Why?
Supercovid looks like a reasonable guess as to why.
As a result, we don't know whether the mutation began in Kent or whether it was introduced from elsewhere, Prof Peacock said.
And we don't know whether it has already spread onwards from the UK to other countries.
Prof Tom Connor, who was involved in setting up Covid sequencing in Wales, believes it is "probable" that similar variants are emerging around the world, but they may not have been detected yet.
"We are sequencing in the UK at a disproportionate rate," he said, insisting the UK has a better surveillance system than other countries.
In order to know how far the variant has travelled or where it came from, you would need to compare notes with other countries - but comparable data very often does not exist, Prof Connor said.
For example, Public Health Wales sequenced about 4,000 genomes in the past week, more than the whole of France since the beginning of the pandemic.
This point was emphasised by Prof Ravi Gupta at the University of Cambridge, who pointed out it was "no coincidence" that an "interesting" multiple mutation had also been seen in South Africa, another country which does a lot of genomic sequencing.
Other European countries which were very quick to pick up notable mutations, Denmark and the Netherlands, also have strong surveillance systems.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55413666
As I suggested earlier, they probably have the same variant, or their own homegrown version(s), in circulation in many countries, it's just that they're either not bothering to look or are incapable of doing so.
Even Germany isn't outstanding at everything.
Ach, I was only kissing your wife briefly
Crivvens, I was only burgling your apartment briefly
Hoots, I was just murdering my mother in law briefly
The party established to represent the interests of working people. Not a bunch of tofu munching hand-wringers in Hampstead.
*knocks back scotch with a worldly sigh*
If and when you go over 1,000 deaths a day, that will be a pivotal moment.
We are, I believe, exceptional in having these two kinds of exceptionalism.
The Secretary of the GMB
Had articles distributed in the New Statesmen
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the Party
And could only win it back
By increased work quotas. Would it not in that case be simpler
for the Party
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Oh good, Plymouth is a hotspot. Terrific.
Looks like Kent, as a current example of an R rate forged in Tier 3 (post lockdown) is running with R at about 1.3, compared with an average around 0.9 in the earlier T3s once they stabilised.
Looks like Essex, which is an example of an R rate forged in Tier 2, is running at about 1.6, as opposed to around 1.1-1.2 typical for earlier tier 2 regimes - this might be the peak growth.
So, it does look like a numerical 0.4 on observed R rates a month or two ago.
The thought that this extra transmissibility is mostly through children passing the virus on does seem plausible. And so a quiet tier 4 Christmas will help.
R rates are similarly high across the whole East and South East. I'd do something like the following - the exact tiers would depend on the distribution signals for the new strain:
Re-tier
- Be minded to make the whole SE, E and London T4.
- Make all remaining areas London side of the Severn and Trent, T3.
- No areas to remain in T1.
- Review tiers on a daily basis.
Strengthen the current tiers a little more specifically for childrens' activities:
- Tier 3 currently allows most in person out of school and leisure activities for children, socially distanced of course, to continue. This should stop, say at least for over 11s in T2, and probably for all ages in tier 3.
- The extension of secondary Christmas holidays until at least 11/1, possibly with the phased return, then an additional week to half-term (13/2-28/2 would be typical). The first week to ensure schools' rapid testing can be set up successfully. (we can see a little why it was sudden now, but breathing space will be no bad thing).
- Option for secondary schools to run part remote where they are set up for that. Teaching should continue for all pupils but a lot more discretion given as to how - the central question being can they teach their pupils well enough by that mode.
- Parents encouraged to minimise childrens' current bus use.
I like the idea that T5 could be like March lockdown, but I wouldn't deploy that yet (T4 with the schools off for Xmad is pretty close to this).
You can find negative nationalists in every country.
betterworse than anyone else's negative nationalistsOrwell repeatedly warned that there was a chunk of intellectual socialism that thought the biggest problem was the working class. And that this could destroy the Labour movement....
They had 3 elections in one year, so well done to stretching this one out for a whole year, if only due to election periods.
Will need to be in place to 28 Feb, and that will only work if Oxford AZ is approved this year ie next week.
Also schools closed until 28 Feb - government will announce 'on line' learning for part of Jan initially, will be extended to 28 Feb
Partial relaxations in March, maybe reduction to Tier 3 national, dependent on vaccine progress by 28 Feb.
The sooner the kids are out of circulation, the sooner the disease (hopefully) comes under control, and the earlier we can start to let people back out again once the vaccination programme is well advanced? If we can get the caseload right the way down then it might be possible to, for example, get children back to school once we've got as far as jabbing all the over 70s and the shielders, rather than needing to wait until we've got down as far as the over 60s or over 55s, because the hospitals are still too full to risk it?
Schools closed until 28 Feb?????? OMFG
Personally, that is awful news. I hope you are wrong, I fear you could be right
https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1341523991304024068?s=20
If the government doesn't get a grip we are up to 100,000 cases a day by first week in Jan.
Moreover, if you close the schools you shutter the economy in a particularly vicious way. It means millions of parents have to stay home to look after the kids. It is a brutal blow to economic activity.
This is why the government - which has got many things wrong - has rightly striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost.
One apology (maybe two to cover Barnard Castle as well) and it would have been over with in moments. Barely even front page worthy.
The psychotic attempt to never apologise was so self wounding.
Sturgeon better be squeaky fucking clean about 'breifly' removing the mask as that's a hostage to fucking fortune.
As I've said before, if there were no vaccine and no imminent prospect of one then we'd have to attempt risk segmentation or other strategies to try to live with this thing, because we can't go on with lockdown cycles ad infinitum. But there is a highly effective vaccine, with a prospect of one that's much easier to administer and available in larger quantities coming round the next corner.
The end is in sight, even if it is still a fairly distant prospect that is going to make a locked down Winter bloody miserable for everybody. Letting the virus run amok in the schools and bring down the healthcare system isn't justified by any reasonable cost-benefit analysis.
It's not just about 'saving the old', 100,000 dead and many more with long COVID often young is not a good idea. For most children having two months at home won't make a difference, it's a long time since I went to school but I know 80% of the time there is wasted/spent on pointless things so there will be no real learning loss.
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1341488498700894214?s=19
Also you have the problem of parents spreading it between themselves as they congregate outside of school before and after lessons as of course nowadays children can't walk to school - in my day children got themselves to school, perfectly safely!
It's not about two months though is it, it's that plus the three months earlier this year plus the disruption in between. Plus the distinction between secondary schools and primary schools where disruption at such a formative age is even more keenly felt.
To me the school closure calls always have the same problem. It's easy to see why it may well need to be done but one rarely, if ever, sees any call to close the schools that explains how that time could (or should) be made back up.
We have to assume that online/blended learning is only at best a partial replacement for in-person teaching, particularly at the younger age brackets or in areas where access to online materials will be more difficult, and therefore the time spent physically out of school needs to be made back up somewhere.
Calls to close schools would be more compelling if that was addressed within them, even excepting the many other good reasons to avoid it if possible.
I have always had more of a soft spot for the EU characters than our own Europhile cadre. Mostly because they are generally honest about what the EU is about and what membership means. Something to many UK politicians have consistently tried to avoid making explicit.
The issue isn't that we must save the elderly at any cost, it's that if the disease makes enough people sick at once then the healthcare system will implode, and take down anybody - young and old alike - who needs treatment for everything.
The Government has striven to keep the schools open at almost any cost. Almost. They're prepared to shut down the whole of hospitality, any retailers we can get by without, leisure facilities which benefit millions by providing health-improving exercise and force extended families to stay physically apart for months on end, as well as to ruin people's Christmas plans at the last minute - and yet, the Tier 4 advice still permits in-person tuition to continue. It will be practically the last thing to go. Nobody wants it to go. If it wasn't absolutely necessary then I wouldn't want it to go.
This all comes down to a calculation about how many people have to suffer and die in order that kids can keep going to school, which is the sort of trade off we make all the time in society. A certain number of people, including children of course, die on the roads every year because we don't reimpose the Red Flag Act. The social benefits of saving those lives would be outweighed by the damage caused to others, so we let them die. It's simply my contention that making children put up with remote learning for two, three, four months is less bad than the consequences of allowing schools to resume their function as coronavirus petri dishes, when the disease is running rampant in large swathes of the land and the new variant is liable to spread everywhere in the fullness of time. It's the least worst option.
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1341513083089547266?s=20
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1341518551467892738?s=20
Noted re primary schools and the exposure there ie primary schools appears to be less so maybe keep them open.
In general though in terms of learning the 'lost' summer term 2019/2020 and first half term Q1 2020/2021 would really make very little difference.