I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
Could the other firms not make more of the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine under license? If so, govts should band together and make it clear this has to happen or facilities will be requisitioned to make it happen regardless.
As I understand it - Pfizer promised 10m doses by end of year. This was then downgraded to 4m doses less than a month later. Not seen a more recent figure.
Their manufacturing must be under enormous pressure - there may also be shortages of needed ingredients.
We should view govt plans as best case, everything goes well, scenario.
But why cant GSK or someone produce more Pfizer vaccines? Again we were promised a war scale effort to tackle this, demand it is done or requisition the capability.
Yeah, publish the recipe and let us home brew vaccine in the shed.
GSK and other huge established firms are not equivalent to home brewing?? Bizarre. If there is a technical reason they can't fair enough, but please spell it out.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
Could the other firms not make more of the Pfizer/Biontech vaccine under license? If so, govts should band together and make it clear this has to happen or facilities will be requisitioned to make it happen regardless.
As I understand it - Pfizer promised 10m doses by end of year. This was then downgraded to 4m doses less than a month later. Not seen a more recent figure.
Their manufacturing must be under enormous pressure - there may also be shortages of needed ingredients.
We should view govt plans as best case, everything goes well, scenario.
But why cant GSK or someone produce more Pfizer vaccines? Again we were promised a war scale effort to tackle this, demand it is done or requisition the capability.
Dont know. Would guess it's quite complicated, intellectual property, GSK have their own vaccine they want to make, worldwide ingredient shortages. It also probably takes a long time to get a facility to make a new product?
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Robert, I can't get the arithmetic to work out here. How much do you reckon this would reduce hospitalization rates by? (For ICU admissions it seems to be at most 50%.) During the December tiers the doubling time for the new variant seemed to be about a week. Even if a) fewer go shopping, and b) the vaccine makes all 10 million unable to transmit the virus, this doesn't reduce R by very much. Maybe a doubling time of two weeks, three if we're lucky?
Unless the January lockdowns suppress cases a great deal -- which SAGE thinks they won't -- it looks like hospitals will be overwhelmed on any relaxation. My finger-in-the-air guess is that we'd need to vaccinate 20-25 million before relaxation, unless the new variant isn't a transmissible as thought, or hospitalization age structure is much older than I thought.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
When you are arguing over medical statistics and whether a survey is accurate or has flaws in it you don't leak anything.
And the fact is that Oxford have never leaked anything the only people doing it are ministers who don't know the difference between provisional and final.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
At the same time, 4 year high this year on people leaving (despite covid) and past 5 years significantly up on previous 5. The trend has been clear increase in the number of people selling up and they are on average moving further away from London.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 6%.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Robert, I can't get the arithmetic to work out here. How much do you reckon this would reduce hospitalization rates by? (For ICU admissions it seems to be at most 50%.) During the December tiers the doubling time for the new variant seemed to be about a week. Even if a) fewer go shopping, and b) the vaccine makes all 10 million unable to transmit the virus, this doesn't reduce R by very much. Maybe a doubling time of two weeks, three if we're lucky?
Unless the January lockdowns suppress cases a great deal -- which SAGE thinks they won't -- it looks like hospitals will be overwhelmed on any relaxation. My finger-in-the-air guess is that we'd need to vaccinate 20-25 million before relaxation, unless the new variant isn't a transmissible as thought, or hospitalization age structure is much older than I thought.
Am I missing something here?
--AS
There's a skew on hospitalisation rates by age group - as there is for death rates but less extreme.
These are USA figures from August, but it makes the point. It probably needs working through an equivalent demographic profile for the UK to get the actual numbers. However over 75s are only just over 10% of the population.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 6%.
The article says 13%.
Just noticed my mistake, that is crazy and unbelievable.
And it doesn't matter if the decision is taken 5 minutes before kick off if people's lives are at stake.
I’m not saying the match should have been played.
I’m saying that, at the start of the season the PL said that matches should go ahead or be forfeited if a team can’t field 14 players, but now appear to be taking a different line on this when it happened to a big club.
In Everton’s view, MC should have either sent out the reserves last night, or Everton should be awarded the win in line with the PL statements at the start of the season.
Irrespective of how this virus arrived at MC, a sporting penalty might actually concentrate the minds of the chairmen, in how they are allowing clubs to control bubbles of players and coaches.
For some reason, sportsmen in general, and footballers in particular, seem incredibly susceptible to this virus. And not just because they’re regularly tested.
I don't think that they are very good at bubbles. Perhaps the financial pressure is less when you already have more money than you will ever be able to spend although other less well rewarded sports have been affected too. I suspect spending quite a lot of time in gyms is not optimal.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
A sudden influx of higher value properties being sold because their owners were moving to get away from Cummings (or deciding to move to farms in Wales) would push the average sale price up, even as house prices generally were falling.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
A sudden influx of higher value properties being sold because their owners were moving to get away from Cummings (or deciding to move to farms in Wales) would push the average sale price up, even as house prices generally were falling.
Yes, there is no way real prices are up by 13% in central London. Down by 13% perhaps.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
A sudden influx of higher value properties being sold because their owners were moving to get away from Cummings (or deciding to move to farms in Wales) would push the average sale price up, even as house prices generally were falling.
You might have thought that the people most keen to move out would be living in small flats without gardens. I detect little desire to leave among the local bourgeoisie in their £1.3mn 5 bed houses with nice big gardens here in SE London.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Robert, I can't get the arithmetic to work out here. How much do you reckon this would reduce hospitalization rates by? (For ICU admissions it seems to be at most 50%.) During the December tiers the doubling time for the new variant seemed to be about a week. Even if a) fewer go shopping, and b) the vaccine makes all 10 million unable to transmit the virus, this doesn't reduce R by very much. Maybe a doubling time of two weeks, three if we're lucky?
Unless the January lockdowns suppress cases a great deal -- which SAGE thinks they won't -- it looks like hospitals will be overwhelmed on any relaxation. My finger-in-the-air guess is that we'd need to vaccinate 20-25 million before relaxation, unless the new variant isn't a transmissible as thought, or hospitalization age structure is much older than I thought.
Am I missing something here?
--AS
There's a skew on hospitalisation rates by age group - as there is for death rates but less extreme.
These are USA figures from August, but it makes the point. It probably needs working through an equivalent demographic profile for the UK to get the actual numbers. However over 75s are only just over 10% of the population.
Right, that looks similar to my guesstimate for the UK. Too many of the hospitalizations are from the under 65s -- alright, we don't know how many of those were seriously vulnerable for other reasons, but probably not most of them -- so that vaccinating say over 65s and then relaxing restrictions (such that the virus is allowed to double in the rest of the population) gets the NHS back to crisis point. And, a further doubling later, collapse.
It would be okay if the new variant were kept at R<1 by a tiered system, but that seemed pretty clearly to fail in December. And some millions of vulnerable now immune doesn't change R much at all.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
"Keir Starmer is facing a high-profile rebellion against Labour’s Brexit position on the eve of the vote in parliament, as prominent MPs including John McDonnell and Clive Lewis accused him of “falling into the trap of rallying around this rotten deal”.
Labour is likely to contain a major rebellion of frontbench MPs but an increasing number of prominent supporters are urging Starmer to change course. Backbenchers have also raised concerns on private WhatsApp groups that Labour’s endorsement for the deal has been given without the legislation being published.
Those who signed the Labour statement urging Starmer not to support the deal come from across the political spectrum, including the former shadow chancellor McDonnell and Ben Bradshaw, a former cabinet minister who is a staunch supporter of Starmer.
“This deal is a substantial downgrade of the UK’s relationship with the EU,” the statement warns, “and is designed to open the door to rampant economic deregulation – a loss of rights and protections for workers, the environment, food standards and many other areas of life.”
The danger for Starmer is that he starts to look like a one man band. What's more his critics are making a better case for voting against than he is for voting for. My feeling is that Labour should always aim for the high ground however futile. Particularly in opposition. Take a lead from the late Charlie Kennedy.
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Grot shops were ahead of the times. A booming trade now, particularly at Christmas.
When I was at school the Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin was required viewing in a way that is hard to imagine these days. There were only 3 channels and we all had to watch it at the same time, no catch up, no on demand, quite hard to imagine now. The result was that successful shows like this became community events and it was remarkable how much of the script we could re-enact on a single viewing. Always did better on that than the Aeneid.
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Tipping is anathema to an egalitarian society.
Agreed. Since that isn't happening you have to tip generously.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Where @DavidL misses is the time sequence. If a virus kills a host before spreading, there is evolutionary pressure to be less fatal. If transmission is over before host death, then no evolutionary pressure.
Covid-19 mostly spreads in the few days before and after symptoms start, with the severe inflammatory response that does the damage later, so not a lot of pressure, particularly as the vast majority of hosts survive.
It's a fair, if heartless, point, but it ignores that fact that Covid also incapacitates a fair number of those that it doesn't kill as well as consuming and preventing huge amounts of economic activity.
On the other hand, it should hopefully leave us better prepared to deal with a possibly more virulent epidemic in the future.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
A sudden influx of higher value properties being sold because their owners were moving to get away from Cummings (or deciding to move to farms in Wales) would push the average sale price up, even as house prices generally were falling.
You might have thought that the people most keen to move out would be living in small flats without gardens. I detect little desire to leave among the local bourgeoisie in their £1.3mn 5 bed houses with nice big gardens here in SE London.
Yes but they need to find a buyer! Hardly anything has sold, this has only got 5 properties selling there apart from one (presumably new) development:
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Tipping is anathema to an egalitarian society.
In an ideal world, perhaps. In the existing capitalist system, tips are a large share of staff pay in the hospitality sector in the USA.
I don't like the system, but tip well until it is abolished.
Not that I have had the opportunity in the last year!
For anyone interested in US politics, viruses and the media, perhaps the funniest “review of the year show” ever is now on Nexflix, from comedian Andrew Schulz.
Imagine if The Daily Show went back to being funny, and you had to watch it three times to get all the jokes. Genuinely worth an hour to watch.
"Keir Starmer is facing a high-profile rebellion against Labour’s Brexit position on the eve of the vote in parliament, as prominent MPs including John McDonnell and Clive Lewis accused him of “falling into the trap of rallying around this rotten deal”.
Labour is likely to contain a major rebellion of frontbench MPs but an increasing number of prominent supporters are urging Starmer to change course. Backbenchers have also raised concerns on private WhatsApp groups that Labour’s endorsement for the deal has been given without the legislation being published.
Those who signed the Labour statement urging Starmer not to support the deal come from across the political spectrum, including the former shadow chancellor McDonnell and Ben Bradshaw, a former cabinet minister who is a staunch supporter of Starmer.
“This deal is a substantial downgrade of the UK’s relationship with the EU,” the statement warns, “and is designed to open the door to rampant economic deregulation – a loss of rights and protections for workers, the environment, food standards and many other areas of life.”
The danger for Starmer is that he starts to look like a one man band. What's more his critics are making a better case for voting against than he is for voting for. My feeling is that Labour should always aim for the high ground however futile. Particularly in opposition. Take a lead from the late Charlie Kennedy.
Yes. Kennedy led the LibDems in opposition to the Iraq war. Why? The Commons was going to support the war thanks both to Labour's huge majority and the Tories also in support. Yet he stood up what what the party believed was right.
Its the same thing with the DUP, SNP, LDs, Green opposition to the Treaty. It will pass. But they cannot support it because of the harm that they perceive it will do to their constituents.
This is Labour's current folly. They are Nicola Murray about to announce that Labour will back the government cutting school feeding because its time that Labour listened to its voters who want Tough Decisions. It will backfire and backfire badly. Punters in Labour seats held and lost want "brexit". As Brexit smashes into them they will say "hang on this isn't the Brexit we voted for" and then look for someone to blame.
Electorally its a zero-sum game. The Tories will patronise them, sneer at them and then blame them (as HYUFD is already doing). But as Labour also supported it switching support to them becomes all that more difficult. The winners will be fringe lunatics like Corbyn and Farage, and frankly apathy as people just stop voting.
Cold hard economics can be ruthless sometimes. Freakonomics covers good examples of this - my favourite being that legalised abortion reduces crime rates considerably.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Interesting although I thought rabies was rarely fatal with proper treatment. I have read that on here several times and it seemed plausible.
The Internet seems unanimous that it is almost invariably deadly. Anyway, being curable by medical intervention would not be a case of evolving to become less lethal.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Where @DavidL misses is the time sequence. If a virus kills a host before spreading, there is evolutionary pressure to be less fatal. If transmission is over before host death, then no evolutionary pressure.
Covid-19 mostly spreads in the few days before and after symptoms start, with the severe inflammatory response that does the damage later, so not a lot of pressure, particularly as the vast majority of hosts survive.
So you would agree that the next mutation is just as likely to be more lethal than less, provided that the spread period, pre-symptoms, is unaffected? Yet another depressing thought.
At this rate I am going back to Brexit for the LOLs.
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Tipping is anathema to an egalitarian society.
In an ideal world, perhaps. In the existing capitalist system, tips are a large share of staff pay in the hospitality sector in the USA.
I don't like the system, but tip well until it is abolished.
Not that I have had the opportunity in the last year!
Its the difference between the USA and the UK. Anyone in the UK would be earning the Living Wage or Minimum Wage depending upon their age - and many of their customers will too without getting tips themselves.
In the USA though waitresses etc can be exempt from minimum wage laws.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Robert, I can't get the arithmetic to work out here. How much do you reckon this would reduce hospitalization rates by? (For ICU admissions it seems to be at most 50%.) During the December tiers the doubling time for the new variant seemed to be about a week. Even if a) fewer go shopping, and b) the vaccine makes all 10 million unable to transmit the virus, this doesn't reduce R by very much. Maybe a doubling time of two weeks, three if we're lucky?
Unless the January lockdowns suppress cases a great deal -- which SAGE thinks they won't -- it looks like hospitals will be overwhelmed on any relaxation. My finger-in-the-air guess is that we'd need to vaccinate 20-25 million before relaxation, unless the new variant isn't a transmissible as thought, or hospitalization age structure is much older than I thought.
Am I missing something here?
--AS
I fear that it's back to "shield the most vulnerable, so everyone else can get on with their business", with shielding replaced by vaccination.
The calculation is going to change, sure, but temptation to relax restrictions too quickly and let the virus wash over the bulk of the population might be hard to resist.
Cold hard economics can be ruthless sometimes. Freakonomics covers good examples of this - my favourite being that legalised abortion reduces crime rates considerably.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been aroun d for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Interesting although I thought rabies was rarely fatal with proper treatment. I have read that on here several times and it seemed plausible.
The Internet seems unanimous that it is almost invariably deadly. Anyway, being curable by medical intervention would not be a case of evolving to become less lethal.
When I was a kid in Singapore a rabid dog came into our block of flats. I tried to look after it for most of the day bringing it water and scraps to eat. My father was horrified when he found out. Now I have a better understanding of why.
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Tipping is anathema to an egalitarian society.
In an ideal world, perhaps. In the existing capitalist system, tips are a large share of staff pay in the hospitality sector in the USA.
I don't like the system, but tip well until it is abolished.
Not that I have had the opportunity in the last year!
Its the difference between the USA and the UK. Anyone in the UK would be earning the Living Wage or Minimum Wage depending upon their age - and many of their customers will too without getting tips themselves.
In the USA though waitresses etc can be exempt from minimum wage laws.
You have to be careful there a lot of UK companies will take the tip money when it's directly added to the bill and then use it to pay some proportion of the basic wage.
Just about the only thing I use cash for is tipping people so the money goes to those who deserve it.
Edit - there was supposed to be a law to correct this but this is from October 2019 so I suspect it was lost when Boris called an election
I don't think it will be quite that bad, though there will be societal stresses as some are vaccinated while others are not. Being vaccinated isn't a get out of jail free card. Not least is the problem of new mutations.
It seems as if there is a @HYUFD like love of calling out the troops to distribute vaccines and swab everyone that slightly neglects the depleted nature of our forces and their day jobs.
Vaccination will roll out, but at 2 doses each, it is the call and recall system that needs the organising more than driving a lorry from point A to point B. It is a marathon task, and the vaccination staff skilled, but also fatigued. They have been working hard on other duties all year too.
I expect there will be admissions delays and diverted ambulances. That is normal in a British winter, due to our lower bed base than comparable countries. They won't be refused though elective surgery will cease, as wards and staff are redeployed again, and again.
As Sunak sees the bills come in, he is on the horns of a dilemma. Should he break the government finances? Or should he break a lot of small and large businesses?
Isn't Sunak's dilemma more break government finances now by keeping firms on life support or breaking them in the near future by destroying a lot of businesses which should be perfectly placed to ride the upswing?
Implicit in the GFA, but made explicit in the Withdrawal Agreement is the recognition of shared sovereignty over the disputed six counties.
It does seem as if Dublin is more positive about the lives there than London.
With the prosperity south of the border, and decline in religious sectarianism on both sides (though obviously some way to go still!) reunification is a matter of time, just awaiting a plebiscite. I think that the six counties would then become a devolved community of RoI rather than a devolved community of UK.
Sharing sovereignty is one thing.
A bit more of sharing the bills to the Exchequer would be even better.
This seems an ok start but I suspect the Republic is paying a tiny fraction of what the UK is paying.
Paying for the "nice" trivialities while not paying for the bread and butter main bills is a fake kind of generosity. It reminds me of this Friends scene from the 3:30 mark where Rachel's dad pays for a full meal but leaves a small tip and then Ross pays for just the tip. Her dad is not a sympathetic character but his reaction is fair enough.
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Tipping is anathema to an egalitarian society.
Agreed - as long as you are not using it as an excuse for not tipping!
Custom and practice are so baked in that if the staff were given a 10% pay rise to equal loss of tips, some patrons would nevertheless still tip and so it goes on.
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Where @DavidL misses is the time sequence. If a virus kills a host before spreading, there is evolutionary pressure to be less fatal. If transmission is over before host death, then no evolutionary pressure.
Covid-19 mostly spreads in the few days before and after symptoms start, with the severe inflammatory response that does the damage later, so not a lot of pressure, particularly as the vast majority of hosts survive.
So you would agree that the next mutation is just as likely to be more lethal than less, provided that the spread period, pre-symptoms, is unaffected? Yet another depressing thought.
At this rate I am going back to Brexit for the LOLs.
Brexit seems to be one of those viruses that kills the host before transmission, so fears of contagion have not materialised.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
Starmer seems to be making the same mistake as Harriet Harman during her brief period of leadership when she concluded that, after a defeat, Labour needed to follow the Tories to show they respected the voters. This led to them backing the EU Referendum Bill without asking any difficult questions...
I don't think it will be quite that bad, though there will be societal stresses as some are vaccinated while others are not. Being vaccinated isn't a get out of jail free card. Not least is the problem of new mutations.
It seems as if there is a @HYUFD like love of calling out the troops to distribute vaccines and swab everyone that slightly neglects the depleted nature of our forces and their day jobs.
Vaccination will roll out, but at 2 doses each, it is the call and recall system that needs the organising more than driving a lorry from point A to point B. It is a marathon task, and the vaccination staff skilled, but also fatigued. They have been working hard on other duties all year too.
I expect there will be admissions delays and diverted ambulances. That is normal in a British winter, due to our lower bed base than comparable countries. They won't be refused though elective surgery will cease, as wards and staff are redeployed again, and again.
As Sunak sees the bills come in, he is on the horns of a dilemma. Should he break the government finances? Or should he break a lot of small and large businesses?
Isn't Sunak's dilemma more break government finances now by keeping firms on life support or breaking them in the near future by destroying a lot of businesses which should be perfectly placed to ride the upswing?
Sunak should continue to hose the money into the economy. We are already at unrepayable levels of Monopoly money debt, so in for a penny, in for a pound.
Cyclefree's excellent header is similar in thought to my own. The Labour element of her analysis, I hope is wrong, but fear it might come to pass. If Johnson is still riding high in the polls after Cyclefree's anticipated economic meltdown to key employment sectors and the eye-watering levels of corruption, I better settle myself to never see anything other than a Conservative Government for my remaining (if I'm lucky) quarter century.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Even if not as effective as some others if it meets the required standards for vaccines what's the issue? Feels like our lack of knowledge on vaccines usually can lead to expecting them to be perfect.
"Keir Starmer is facing a high-profile rebellion against Labour’s Brexit position on the eve of the vote in parliament, as prominent MPs including John McDonnell and Clive Lewis accused him of “falling into the trap of rallying around this rotten deal”.
Labour is likely to contain a major rebellion of frontbench MPs but an increasing number of prominent supporters are urging Starmer to change course. Backbenchers have also raised concerns on private WhatsApp groups that Labour’s endorsement for the deal has been given without the legislation being published.
Those who signed the Labour statement urging Starmer not to support the deal come from across the political spectrum, including the former shadow chancellor McDonnell and Ben Bradshaw, a former cabinet minister who is a staunch supporter of Starmer.
“This deal is a substantial downgrade of the UK’s relationship with the EU,” the statement warns, “and is designed to open the door to rampant economic deregulation – a loss of rights and protections for workers, the environment, food standards and many other areas of life.”
The danger for Starmer is that he starts to look like a one man band. What's more his critics are making a better case for voting against than he is for voting for. My feeling is that Labour should always aim for the high ground however futile. Particularly in opposition. Take a lead from the late Charlie Kennedy.
Yes. Kennedy led the LibDems in opposition to the Iraq war. Why? The Commons was going to support the war thanks both to Labour's huge majority and the Tories also in support. Yet he stood up what what the party believed was right.
Its the same thing with the DUP, SNP, LDs, Green opposition to the Treaty. It will pass. But they cannot support it because of the harm that they perceive it will do to their constituents.
This is Labour's current folly. They are Nicola Murray about to announce that Labour will back the government cutting school feeding because its time that Labour listened to its voters who want Tough Decisions. It will backfire and backfire badly. Punters in Labour seats held and lost want "brexit". As Brexit smashes into them they will say "hang on this isn't the Brexit we voted for" and then look for someone to blame.
Electorally its a zero-sum game. The Tories will patronise them, sneer at them and then blame them (as HYUFD is already doing). But as Labour also supported it switching support to them becomes all that more difficult. The winners will be fringe lunatics like Corbyn and Farage, and frankly apathy as people just stop voting.
But Labour is never burdened down by hypocrisy. "Tory cuts" were loudly railed against as such, notwithstanding Labour MPs too would have had to make them, had they won in 2010. Labour MPs will similarly rail against a "Tory Brexit" that they were whipped to support. Howling at the moon is a core skill for Labour MPs.
It's no wonder that Red Wall voters wondered what they were good for. A question those voters will continue to ask. And one abour MPs will continue to give them good cause to ask.
Great piece although somewhat infused with your tendency to always expect the worst. On which note I did tell you the last time you went ultra gloomy that both a Trump 2nd term and a Brexit "no deal" were not happening events, didn't I?
Just a quick comment on your #6, the NHS being "not there". This is less prediction than reportage since it's already becoming the case. ICU capacity is insufficient. Same for O2. Ambulances are making tough decisions. And this is before it really hits.
Cold hard economics can be ruthless sometimes. Freakonomics covers good examples of this - my favourite being that legalised abortion reduces crime rates considerably.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
Starmer seems to be making the same mistake as Harriet Harman during her brief period of leadership when she concluded that, after a defeat, Labour needed to follow the Tories to show they respected the voters. This led to them backing the EU Referendum Bill without asking any difficult questions...
Starmer has so many options open to him to ensure the gruel thin (and looking thinner after every read) bill passes without Labour Party fingerprints all over it. I am terminally stupid, but even I know the worst of all worlds option would be to whip the PLP to support it.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
The virus is where Johnny Depp was five years ago, so successful that it can do whatever the hell it wants up to and including being on class A drugs at work and shitting in the marital bed, and get away with it.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Even if not as effective as some others if it meets the required standards for vaccines what's the issue? Feels like our lack of knowledge on vaccines usually can lead to expecting them to be perfect.
If it’s more than 60% effective, that on its own suggests it would be more useful than lateral flow tests as a means of control. Plus it’s cheaper, plus it’s easier to deal with.
You should never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Even if not as effective as some others if it meets the required standards for vaccines what's the issue? Feels like our lack of knowledge on vaccines usually can lead to expecting them to be perfect.
Before the Pfizer one came out the head of UK vaccines was saying they needed to be about 40-50% effective to be worthwhile. After Pfizers the publics expectation is 90%+ or at least 80%+.
Better Frazer than the optimistic twaddle that brought us it will all be over by Xmas.
Pessimism is not inherently better than optimism. However the less pleasant predictions, on past performance, do look more likely. Negativity is not necessarily unduly pessimistic.
"As more comes out about what the Brexit deal means in reality for former Labour voters.Labour will regret voting for it." Indeed. Particularly regrettable, and detrimental to their gaining support, will be the mocking and ridicule Labour suffer from Boris Johnson, who, whenever Labour draw attention to the downsides of the deal will be told "You voted for it".
It's a fair, if heartless, point, but it ignores that fact that Covid also incapacitates a fair number of those that it doesn't kill as well as consuming and preventing huge amounts of economic activity.
On the other hand, it should hopefully leave us better prepared to deal with a possibly more virulent epidemic in the future.
On the purely utilitarian point afaics any ‘mildly beneficial’ effects are completely overshadowed by blighted economies and indentured futures, making Warner look like an adolescently heartless twat and wrong. Not that that bothers The Telegraph any more.
You may be right on the future epidemics thing, though humanity’s talent for preparing for the last war should never be forgotten.
"The government will keep making promises about the worst being over on various dates, all of which will be regularly postponed." This is a very plausible meta-induction.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
Put like that, can we expect Covid-19 to be given a junior ministerial job in the next reshuffle?
Cold hard economics can be ruthless sometimes. Freakonomics covers good examples of this - my favourite being that legalised abortion reduces crime rates considerably.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
Health economics is a strange activity. I once sat in on a Health Service management discussion about a chiropody service. Among the comments were that enabling old people to walk to the surgery reduced the number of home visits, and indeed kept the old people themselves healthier overall.
True, of course, but it didn't stop the chiropody service being cut.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
The virus is where Johnny Depp was five years ago, so successful that it can do whatever the hell it wants up to and including being on class A drugs at work and shitting in the marital bed, and get away with it.
Dreadful. If they hadn't put a stop to him he'd be having sex with dead pigs by now.
I remember @Mysticrose called Alastair Meeks a cross between Private Frazer and Eeyore when back in February he warned us all about the looming Covid-19 pandemic.
Thread writers getting called Private Frazer BTL does mean the thread writer is Nostradamus.
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
A sudden influx of higher value properties being sold because their owners were moving to get away from Cummings (or deciding to move to farms in Wales) would push the average sale price up, even as house prices generally were falling.
You might have thought that the people most keen to move out would be living in small flats without gardens. I detect little desire to leave among the local bourgeoisie in their £1.3mn 5 bed houses with nice big gardens here in SE London.
Yes but they need to find a buyer! Hardly anything has sold, this has only got 5 properties selling there apart from one (presumably new) development:
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
Where @DavidL misses is the time sequence. If a virus kills a host before spreading, there is evolutionary pressure to be less fatal. If transmission is over before host death, then no evolutionary pressure.
Covid-19 mostly spreads in the few days before and after symptoms start, with the severe inflammatory response that does the damage later, so not a lot of pressure, particularly as the vast majority of hosts survive.
So you would agree that the next mutation is just as likely to be more lethal than less, provided that the spread period, pre-symptoms, is unaffected? Yet another depressing thought.
At this rate I am going back to Brexit for the LOLs.
Brexit seems to be one of those viruses that kills the host before transmission, so fears of contagion have not materialised.
Even if trying to take a disinterested view as he suggests it doesn't make any sense given numbers involved and remaining. So it's being horrible without even a 'dark truth' kind of vibe.
2021 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party. They are focused on being able to have demonstrated the elimination of poverty (which they probably will be able to evidence) accelerating past the US as the #1 global economy (which they have probably missed but will be on track to do) and demonstrating the positive aspects of Chinese communism in 2021 in the eyes of the world (with increased internal suppression of e.g. the Uighur atrocities).
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Even if not as effective as some others if it meets the required standards for vaccines what's the issue? Feels like our lack of knowledge on vaccines usually can lead to expecting them to be perfect.
Before the Pfizer one came out the head of UK vaccines was saying they needed to be about 40-50% effective to be worthwhile. After Pfizers the publics expectation is 90%+ or at least 80%+.
It's an Irish site, so there's no particular British political angle. I found it an interesting read.
You might not be surprised to learn that I don't agree with some of that but I have consistently said that the deal (before there was one) is a starting point, not an end point. The key for us is to have access for our financial services by the end of March (which is the target date). If we don't get it I think we seriously have to wonder how much this deal is actually in our interests given the massive trade imbalances.
Where I think that the piece gets it wrong is that it is somewhat parochial, it seems to work on the assumption that the EU is the rest of the world for us. It isn't and its share of our trade will decline, possibly quite sharply. How sharply will depend on how they behave.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
Put like that, can we expect Covid-19 to be given a junior ministerial job in the next reshuffle?
Good God no. It's ability to mutate in order to do its job with such efficiency would put all other junior ministers to shame. No, that wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all.
Cold hard economics can be ruthless sometimes. Freakonomics covers good examples of this - my favourite being that legalised abortion reduces crime rates considerably.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
Yep. This is why I keep at it. I ask not what my country can do for me, I ask what I can do for my country, and the answer is light up several coffin nails a day. It's not wholly altruistic of course. As with charity giving there's a boost to the mental well being of the benefactor. Virtue warms the cockles.
It's an Irish site, so there's no particular British political angle. I found it an interesting read.
You might not be surprised to learn that I don't agree with some of that but I have consistently said that the deal (before there was one) is a starting point, not an end point. The key for us is to have access for our financial services by the end of March (which is the target date). If we don't get it I think we seriously have to wonder how much this deal is actually in our interests given the massive trade imbalances.
Where I think that the piece gets it wrong is that it is somewhat parochial, it seems to work on the assumption that the EU is the rest of the world for us. It isn't and its share of our trade will decline, possibly quite sharply. How sharply will depend on how they behave.
Of course it will decline, we have just put up a load of trade barriers. You seem to be saying that Brexit isn't a big deal because we won't be trading much with Europe anyway after Brexit, which is certainly a novel take.
Completely OT but fun - test your literature knowledge by identifying novels from their Library of Congress categorisations - I didn't score myself (assumed I'd be rubbish) but got more than I expected:
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
The virus is where Johnny Depp was five years ago, so successful that it can do whatever the hell it wants up to and including being on class A drugs at work and shitting in the marital bed, and get away with it.
Point of order - it was his wife that shat the marital bed.
2021 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party. They are focused on being able to have demonstrated the elimination of poverty (which they probably will be able to evidence) accelerating past the US as the #1 global economy (which they have probably missed but will be on track to do) and demonstrating the positive aspects of Chinese communism in 2021 in the eyes of the world (with increased internal suppression of e.g. the Uighur atrocities).
I would not bet against it in 2022 though.
I feel like Chinese communism is a phrase requiring airquotes. But people not being so poverty stricken is a positive even if by that horrible lot.
Bravery points for anyone having a go at the prediction game.
Cyclefree writes: "The government’s vaccination programme will not reach the level of daily vaccinations needed to stop its spread. By early summer the U.K. will be a unhappy and uneasy mixture of areas still under restrictions"
I think 2021 could be worse even than that:
"The government’s vaccination programme WILL reach the level of daily vaccinations needed to stop its spread. YET by early summer the U.K. will REMAIN to be an unhappy and uneasy mixture of areas still under restrictions".
I remember @Mysticrose called Alastair Meeks a cross between Private Frazer and Eeyore when back in February he warned us all about the looming Covid-19 pandemic.
Thread writers getting called Private Frazer BTL does mean the thread writer is Nostradamus.
Cold hard economics can be ruthless sometimes. Freakonomics covers good examples of this - my favourite being that legalised abortion reduces crime rates considerably.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
Yep. This is why I keep at it. I ask not what my country can do for me, I ask what I can do for my country, and the answer is light up several coffin nails a day. It's not wholly altruistic of course. As with charity giving there's a boost to the mental well being of the benefactor. Virtue warms the cockles.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
Put like that, can we expect Covid-19 to be given a junior ministerial job in the next reshuffle?
Good God no. It's ability to mutate in order to do its job with such efficiency would put all other junior ministers to shame. No, that wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all.
On the other hand, have you heard Michael Gove on a morning media round? His position evolves faster than a 'rona.
It's an Irish site, so there's no particular British political angle. I found it an interesting read.
You might not be surprised to learn that I don't agree with some of that but I have consistently said that the deal (before there was one) is a starting point, not an end point. The key for us is to have access for our financial services by the end of March (which is the target date). If we don't get it I think we seriously have to wonder how much this deal is actually in our interests given the massive trade imbalances.
Where I think that the piece gets it wrong is that it is somewhat parochial, it seems to work on the assumption that the EU is the rest of the world for us. It isn't and its share of our trade will decline, possibly quite sharply. How sharply will depend on how they behave.
Very fair critique. Certainly if it goes wrong so far as financial services are concerned Boris will need armed guards if he goes anywhere near the City
Interesting that @Cyclefree and I have both anticipated a bothersome mutation in the virus delaying the day of recovery into later in the year. We are fortunate in some respects that the current mutation does not seem to increase the severity of the disease, only its ability to spread (although that is a big enough problem, blowing several holes through the current tier system which is built upon anticipated R rates for certain activities).
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
Not true about becoming less virulent. Rabies - been around for at least 5000 years, still virtually 100% lethal. Smallpox in the same ballpark. There are so many human beings that you would have to thin out 80% of them before the running out of hosts effect began to kick in.
I think what evidence we have tends to suggest that reduction over time in the virulence of respiratory diseases is more dependant on the human immune system. (See for example the effects of common viruses in the newly discovered Americas.)
From the POV of the virus, there’s some sort of trade off between infectivity and mortality, but unless mortality is really quite high, it’s probably not that much of a factor,
After all the PB London phobes chatting shit about a mass exodus from the crime ridden hell-scape of the capital to the bucolic arcadia of their rural idylls, I was surprised to see that the fastest house price growth in the UK this year was in Islington. Perhaps the cachet of living next door to Dominic Cummings proved irresistible.
Some of these indices are not very reliable. It may be that the mix of properties sold in Islington changed rather than prices went up, and not sure the indices account well for that, if at all. More houses and garden flats than normal would have completed and less small flats, especially those with cladding in high rises.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 6%.
The article says 13%.
Just noticed my mistake, that is crazy and unbelievable.
This has come down from £725k in May 2019 to £585k now, probably needs another £100k to come off to sell.
If we doubt the accuracy of an aggregate index based on many transactions you will understand my reluctance to be persuaded by a single data point. Inference based on anecdote is a sure way of losing money in financial markets.
I think it's really very simple: once we have 6 to 10 million of the most vulnerable people vaccinated, then we can start to see restrictions relaxed. (Not removed, relaxed.)
Concerns about vaccine distribution are mostly bunkum. Sticking a needle in someone's arm is not rocket science. And while the Pfizer vaccine is very picky about its temperature for long term storage (which is still not that big a deal), that problem doesn't really exist for the other vaccines.
If we have them, and they work, they will be used. Availability - not distribution - is the issue.
The big issue is that right now, we maybe have 300,000 doses of Pfizer/BioNTech available per week. And its a 'dual shot' vaccine.
My understanding, and I could be wrong, is that there are 20 million doses of AZN/Oxford in the UK. If true, that will make a massive difference to getting normality back.
I agree, Robert. The world knows how to do vaccinations. The only thing missing for the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines is the cold distribution chain. Not an issue with more standard vaccines.
Yet to see if the Oxford one is any good though, signs so far are that it is crap.
Any evidence to go with that or just your gut instinct.
It actually doesn't need to be brilliant to be good enough- if it reduces the chance of needing a hospital visit to at worst a day or two in bed with reduced transmission it's more than good enough
Gut instinct and severe lack of any news other than hyping. If it had been any good we would have been bombarded with leaks from the dummies like Hancock, Gove, Williamson , etc. Their silence on it speaks volumes. At best my guess would be that they will fudge and approve and it will be UK only , it will be nothing like as good as the other vaccines. I am hoping not to get a second rate vaccine just because these idiots could not run a bath.
The increased transmission of the new variant of the virus means that we are running out of time to get people vaccinated. We need to vaccinate people before April 2021 or they are likely to get COVID instead. Without the Oxford/AZN vaccine I do not see how this can be done. The virus doesn't know about testing regimes, regulatory approval timescales, etc., and it never takes time off for holidays.
My father - who is both an epidemiologist in animals and a practical vet - said, ‘this virus has not read the rules on how a good virus behaves.’
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
Put like that, can we expect Covid-19 to be given a junior ministerial job in the next reshuffle?
Good God no. It's ability to mutate in order to do its job with such efficiency would put all other junior ministers to shame. No, that wouldn't do. Wouldn't do at all.
It's an Irish site, so there's no particular British political angle. I found it an interesting read.
You might not be surprised to learn that I don't agree with some of that but I have consistently said that the deal (before there was one) is a starting point, not an end point. The key for us is to have access for our financial services by the end of March (which is the target date). If we don't get it I think we seriously have to wonder how much this deal is actually in our interests given the massive trade imbalances.
Where I think that the piece gets it wrong is that it is somewhat parochial, it seems to work on the assumption that the EU is the rest of the world for us. It isn't and its share of our trade will decline, possibly quite sharply. How sharply will depend on how they behave.
I'm friends with a former Vote Leave staffers, they both privately admitted if that if the public knew back in 2016 that this would be the deal, Remain would have won. Compare the rhetoric of Vote Leave in 2016 with the reality of the deal.
This deal is likely as good as it gets for the financial services sector, I think you're likely to see an acceleration of movements of out of the UK and domiciling the trades into the EU, which is is going to well and truly screw Rishi Sunak's plans.
I think H1 2021 will be the reverse of the big bang of 1986. The only question left is in which EU country they domicile the trades in.
Comments
Lamebridge. Titter.....
Would guess it's quite complicated, intellectual property, GSK have their own vaccine they want to make, worldwide ingredient shortages.
It also probably takes a long time to get a facility to make a new product?
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/dec/29/islington-london-records-uk-highest-house-price-growth-2020
Unless the January lockdowns suppress cases a great deal -- which SAGE thinks they won't -- it looks like hospitals will be overwhelmed on any relaxation. My finger-in-the-air guess is that we'd need to vaccinate 20-25 million before relaxation, unless the new variant isn't a transmissible as thought, or hospitalization age structure is much older than I thought.
Am I missing something here?
--AS
And the fact is that Oxford have never leaked anything the only people doing it are ministers who don't know the difference between provisional and final.
I have been tracking prices in other parts of central London during lockdown and asking prices are clearly down, so would be quite surprised if Islington is really up 13%.
My understanding is that over time viruses tend to become less virulent on the Darwinian principle that killing off your host is not the most efficient way to spread but this virus is a bastard, there is no doubt about it, and I think its inevitable that there will be a further sting in the tail.
Yesterday's infection rates were horrendous. January is going to be the worst month of the entire pandemic for deaths. The highly controversial relaxation over Christmas will no doubt get some of the blame but the sad truth is that it was baked in before Christmas even came. We can all only hope that the Oxford vaccine is indeed approved today and that we get many millions protected before the end of January.
One thing that is going to be key which we don't yet seem to know the answer to is whether the vaccines stop someone from being infectious, as opposed to not getting ill. We must all hope and pray that is so because nothing else is going to stop the spread of this new variant for a long time to come.
These are USA figures from August, but it makes the point. It probably needs working through an equivalent demographic profile for the UK to get the actual numbers. However over 75s are only just over 10% of the population.
https://twitter.com/mattwardman/status/1343844948479762432
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/51395469?search_identifier=cda5cad81601122e92f9087e74b9253f
This has come down from £725k in May 2019 to £585k now, probably needs another £100k to come off to sell.
https://twitter.com/michaelrosenyes/status/1343835922434056192?s=21
It would be okay if the new variant were kept at R<1 by a tiered system, but that seemed pretty clearly to fail in December. And some millions of vulnerable now immune doesn't change R much at all.
--AS
More here
http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/2007/08/26/rabbits-1-virus-1-evolution-of-viral-virulence/
I'd prefer the establishment I patronize to handle the paying of its staff properly itself, and then bill me appropriately, rather than to outsource the responsibility to a haphazard system of custom and practice.
Tipping is anathema to an egalitarian society.
Covid-19 mostly spreads in the few days before and after symptoms start, with the severe inflammatory response that does the damage later, so not a lot of pressure, particularly as the vast majority of hosts survive.
On the other hand, it should hopefully leave us better prepared to deal with a possibly more virulent epidemic in the future.
https://houseprices.io/?q=islington
I don't like the system, but tip well until it is abolished.
Not that I have had the opportunity in the last year!
Imagine if The Daily Show went back to being funny, and you had to watch it three times to get all the jokes. Genuinely worth an hour to watch.
(Only clean-ish clip I could find)
https://twitter.com/andrewschulz/status/1340042386076942336
Its the same thing with the DUP, SNP, LDs, Green opposition to the Treaty. It will pass. But they cannot support it because of the harm that they perceive it will do to their constituents.
This is Labour's current folly. They are Nicola Murray about to announce that Labour will back the government cutting school feeding because its time that Labour listened to its voters who want Tough Decisions. It will backfire and backfire badly. Punters in Labour seats held and lost want "brexit". As Brexit smashes into them they will say "hang on this isn't the Brexit we voted for" and then look for someone to blame.
Electorally its a zero-sum game. The Tories will patronise them, sneer at them and then blame them (as HYUFD is already doing). But as Labour also supported it switching support to them becomes all that more difficult. The winners will be fringe lunatics like Corbyn and Farage, and frankly apathy as people just stop voting.
One strange statistic that was true twenty years ago I'm not sure if it still is, is that smokers are good for the exchequer. Not as you'd imagine because of the tax on cigarettes: cancer is extremely expensive to treat for and the cost of treating smoking related cancers can be more than even the combined tax on the cigarettes over the smokers lifetime. Smokers are good for the Exchequer because they die sooner so the Exchequer saves on years of pensions and other related old age costs.
At this rate I am going back to Brexit for the LOLs.
In the USA though waitresses etc can be exempt from minimum wage laws.
The calculation is going to change, sure, but temptation to relax restrictions too quickly and let the virus wash over the bulk of the population might be hard to resist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGlrE6oQ39o
When I was a kid in Singapore a rabid dog came into our block of flats. I tried to look after it for most of the day bringing it water and scraps to eat. My father was horrified when he found out. Now I have a better understanding of why.
Just about the only thing I use cash for is tipping people so the money goes to those who deserve it.
Edit - there was supposed to be a law to correct this but this is from October 2019 so I suspect it was lost when Boris called an election
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/tips-staff-uk-government-bill-restaurants-waiters-a9154986.html
Custom and practice are so baked in that if the staff were given a 10% pay rise to equal loss of tips, some patrons would nevertheless still tip and so it goes on.
It is starting to look as though it has now read them, then torn up the rulebook, pissed on the fragments and buggered the person who gave them the copy.
Cyclefree's excellent header is similar in thought to my own. The Labour element of her analysis, I hope is wrong, but fear it might come to pass. If Johnson is still riding high in the polls after Cyclefree's anticipated economic meltdown to key employment sectors and the eye-watering levels of corruption, I better settle myself to never see anything other than a Conservative Government for my remaining (if I'm lucky) quarter century.
If this were happening in a fortnight the question of reopening schools would be moot.
It's no wonder that Red Wall voters wondered what they were good for. A question those voters will continue to ask. And one abour MPs will continue to give them good cause to ask.
Great piece although somewhat infused with your tendency to always expect the worst. On which note I did tell you the last time you went ultra gloomy that both a Trump 2nd term and a Brexit "no deal" were not happening events, didn't I?
Just a quick comment on your #6, the NHS being "not there". This is less prediction than reportage since it's already becoming the case. ICU capacity is insufficient. Same for O2. Ambulances are making tough decisions. And this is before it really hits.
https://beergbrexit.blog/2020/12/27/brexit-and-paddys-two-rules
It's an Irish site, so there's no particular British political angle. I found it an interesting read.
If I were a Labour MP, I would rebel!
https://twitter.com/MaxCRoser/status/1343677359036182528?s=20
You should never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
You may be right on the future epidemics thing, though humanity’s talent for preparing for the last war should never be forgotten.
True, of course, but it didn't stop the chiropody service being cut.
Thread writers getting called Private Frazer BTL does mean the thread writer is Nostradamus.
https://twitter.com/stefanauer_hku/status/1343733087968980993?s=20
2021 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist party. They are focused on being able to have demonstrated the elimination of poverty (which they probably will be able to evidence) accelerating past the US as the #1 global economy (which they have probably missed but will be on track to do) and demonstrating the positive aspects of Chinese communism in 2021 in the eyes of the world (with increased internal suppression of e.g. the Uighur atrocities).
I would not bet against it in 2022 though.
Where I think that the piece gets it wrong is that it is somewhat parochial, it seems to work on the assumption that the EU is the rest of the world for us. It isn't and its share of our trade will decline, possibly quite sharply. How sharply will depend on how they behave.
As an aside, drinking is the reverse. And charity fundraising skydiving for the NHS costs more in medical costs than it raises.
https://lithub.com/can-you-guess-these-classic-novels-from-their-library-of-congress-subject-categories/
https://twitter.com/nealerichmond/status/1343709302884855809
Cyclefree writes: "The government’s vaccination programme will not reach the level of daily vaccinations needed to stop its spread. By early summer the U.K. will be a unhappy and uneasy mixture of areas still under restrictions"
I think 2021 could be worse even than that:
"The government’s vaccination programme WILL reach the level of daily vaccinations needed to stop its spread. YET by early summer the U.K. will REMAIN to be an unhappy and uneasy mixture of areas still under restrictions".
From the POV of the virus, there’s some sort of trade off between infectivity and mortality, but unless mortality is really quite high, it’s probably not that much of a factor,
This deal is likely as good as it gets for the financial services sector, I think you're likely to see an acceleration of movements of out of the UK and domiciling the trades into the EU, which is is going to well and truly screw Rishi Sunak's plans.
I think H1 2021 will be the reverse of the big bang of 1986. The only question left is in which EU country they domicile the trades in.