And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
70% from 21 days after the first dose before the second.
That’s a very provisional figure to have every confidence in. As you know, I approve the decision, but I’m not a fan of regulators indulging in hyperbole.
It also doesn't make sense, if it's 70% after a single jab then why does the trial data say 62% after two jabs, does the second jab have -8% efficacy? Why bother with it if that's the case. Once again it seems as though the AZ trial has been a bit of a mess.
It does make sense because the trial data includes data from day of injection until day 21. So if someone gets the first dose then a week later gets positive then that is a positive in the data - but it is excluded from the "from day 21" data.
I've just been invited to take part in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have volunteered for such trials a few months ago. The missus reckons there's no point though, and that I might miss out on being vaccinated with the AZ vaccine (I'm in my early 50s) because of my participation in the trial.
I'd also not be able to continue donating blood, and I'd be putting myself at increased risk of contracting Covid from additional exposure to people in the course of the trial, which might then be a risk to my elderly mother (who I do odd jobs for) and my vulnerable sister (who I take to chemo appointments).
Those factors plus the general hassle of participating make me think I should cancel the introductory appointment. What do people think? Is it still worth volunteering for such trials now that we have two working vaccines?
Hmm, the J&J single shot trial is almost complete so this must be for the booster version, if you end up in the placebo arm you'd have to wait until July or so before you were eligible for anything else. As someone who is just over 50 it's a two month delay for a vaccine that may never be used if the single shot version has 70%+ efficacy.
Yes, after looking through the info, I see that it is indeed for the two-shot version, with the shots about 2 months apart. I think that pretty much settles it. If we didn't have a vaccine already, then I'd still go for it, but it's hard to make the cost/benefit ratio (for me and/or the general public) stack up now that the AZ vaccine is ready to go.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
My understanding is that to be "symptomatic" in the AZN trial cov002 that they had to have one of 3 symptoms: fever, cough or loss of taste and smell. Anything less than that would count as "asymptomatic" even if there were symptoms.
In the South African and Brazilian studies, there were different criteria for symptoms (as well as different placebo and dosage regimes) and no asymptomatic testing.
Was there any consistency between the trials run in each country? It doesn't appear that way.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
I've just been invited to take part in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have volunteered for such trials a few months ago. The missus reckons there's no point though, and that I might miss out on being vaccinated with the AZ vaccine (I'm in my early 50s) because of my participation in the trial.
I'd also not be able to continue donating blood, and I'd be putting myself at increased risk of contracting Covid from additional exposure to people in the course of the trial, which might then be a risk to my elderly mother (who I do odd jobs for) and my vulnerable sister (who I take to chemo appointments).
Those factors plus the general hassle of participating make me think I should cancel the introductory appointment. What do people think? Is it still worth volunteering for such trials now that we have two working vaccines?
Hmm, the J&J single shot trial is almost complete so this must be for the booster version, if you end up in the placebo arm you'd have to wait until July or so before you were eligible for anything else. As someone who is just over 50 it's a two month delay for a vaccine that may never be used if the single shot version has 70%+ efficacy.
Yes, after looking through the info, I see that it is indeed for the two-shot version, with the shots about 2 months apart. I think that pretty much settles it. If we didn't have a vaccine already, then I'd still go for it, but it's hard to make the cost/benefit ratio stack up now that the AZ vaccine is ready to go.
That's a fair decision, I think if you were under 50 it would be a 50% chance at getting vaccinated early or around the same time if you ended up in the placebo arm.
Luke Letlow, a Republican who was elected to the House of Representatives this month to represent Louisiana’s Fifth Congressional District, died Tuesday evening of complications from Covid-19, a spokesman said. He was 41.
I've just been invited to take part in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have volunteered for such trials a few months ago. The missus reckons there's no point though, and that I might miss out on being vaccinated with the AZ vaccine (I'm in my early 50s) because of my participation in the trial.
I'd also not be able to continue donating blood, and I'd be putting myself at increased risk of contracting Covid from additional exposure to people in the course of the trial, which might then be a risk to my elderly mother (who I do odd jobs for) and my vulnerable sister (who I take to chemo appointments).
Those factors plus the general hassle of participating make me think I should cancel the introductory appointment. What do people think? Is it still worth volunteering for such trials now that we have two working vaccines?
Hmm, the J&J single shot trial is almost complete so this must be for the booster version, if you end up in the placebo arm you'd have to wait until July or so before you were eligible for anything else. As someone who is just over 50 it's a two month delay for a vaccine that may never be used if the single shot version has 70%+ efficacy.
Yes, after looking through the info, I see that it is indeed for the two-shot version, with the shots about 2 months apart. I think that pretty much settles it. If we didn't have a vaccine already, then I'd still go for it, but it's hard to make the cost/benefit ratio (for me and/or the general public) stack up now that the AZ vaccine is ready to go.
Does this suggest that J&J are concerned that their one dose and done trial isn't looking so hot?
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
There was no Wales. That's an Old English word, and I doubt the Welsh would have called themselves the foreigners. Cymry, the together nation in proto Celtic, would surely be better, not sure on the appropriate adjective though.. Cymmrodorion?
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
So, British?
I don't really know what you mean by the ovate word "British".
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
The Iceni with Brythonic Celts. They spoke a language related to Old Welsh.
It really isn't that difficult to understand. 'Britain' is a geographical expression. People that live on this island are British - they wouldn't be any less British if they left the political structure of the UK, and weren't any less British before the UK begun. Europe is exactly the same. In that sense, Scotland has always been both European and British.
I suspect that Blackford means that the early inhabitants of Scotland had stronger links with the continent and what is now the Republic of Ireland than they did with those dwelling in the rest of Britain. This may or may not be the case, although what relevance it has to the Brexit deal is anyone's guess.
Remember that the SNP need these arcane distractions. They are suddenly in quite a difficult place if they are really going for a referendum on the assumption that Scots will want to rejoin the EU.
I've just been invited to take part in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have volunteered for such trials a few months ago. The missus reckons there's no point though, and that I might miss out on being vaccinated with the AZ vaccine (I'm in my early 50s) because of my participation in the trial.
I'd also not be able to continue donating blood, and I'd be putting myself at increased risk of contracting Covid from additional exposure to people in the course of the trial, which might then be a risk to my elderly mother (who I do odd jobs for) and my vulnerable sister (who I take to chemo appointments).
Those factors plus the general hassle of participating make me think I should cancel the introductory appointment. What do people think? Is it still worth volunteering for such trials now that we have two working vaccines?
Hmm, the J&J single shot trial is almost complete so this must be for the booster version, if you end up in the placebo arm you'd have to wait until July or so before you were eligible for anything else. As someone who is just over 50 it's a two month delay for a vaccine that may never be used if the single shot version has 70%+ efficacy.
Yes, after looking through the info, I see that it is indeed for the two-shot version, with the shots about 2 months apart. I think that pretty much settles it. If we didn't have a vaccine already, then I'd still go for it, but it's hard to make the cost/benefit ratio (for me and/or the general public) stack up now that the AZ vaccine is ready to go.
Does this suggest that J&J are concerned that their one dose and done trial isn't looking so hot?
No, they commenced this in November well before they will have had data from the other trial. It's intended as a backup option but doesn't speak to how well the single shot trial is going.
I've just been invited to take part in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, have volunteered for such trials a few months ago. The missus reckons there's no point though, and that I might miss out on being vaccinated with the AZ vaccine (I'm in my early 50s) because of my participation in the trial.
I'd also not be able to continue donating blood, and I'd be putting myself at increased risk of contracting Covid from additional exposure to people in the course of the trial, which might then be a risk to my elderly mother (who I do odd jobs for) and my vulnerable sister (who I take to chemo appointments).
Those factors plus the general hassle of participating make me think I should cancel the introductory appointment. What do people think? Is it still worth volunteering for such trials now that we have two working vaccines?
Hmm, the J&J single shot trial is almost complete so this must be for the booster version, if you end up in the placebo arm you'd have to wait until July or so before you were eligible for anything else. As someone who is just over 50 it's a two month delay for a vaccine that may never be used if the single shot version has 70%+ efficacy.
Yes, after looking through the info, I see that it is indeed for the two-shot version, with the shots about 2 months apart. I think that pretty much settles it. If we didn't have a vaccine already, then I'd still go for it, but it's hard to make the cost/benefit ratio (for me and/or the general public) stack up now that the AZ vaccine is ready to go.
Does this suggest that J&J are concerned that their one dose and done trial isn't looking so hot?
No, they commenced this in November well before they will have had data from the other trial. It's intended as a backup option but doesn't speak to how well the single shot trial is going.
Its like they are running proper medical trials or something ;-)
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
Because then British starts before the 17th Century which makes Blackford wrong.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
My understanding is that to be "symptomatic" in the AZN trial cov002 that they had to have one of 3 symptoms: fever, cough or loss of taste and smell. Anything less than that would count as "asymptomatic" even if there were symptoms.
In the South African and Brazilian studies, there were different criteria for symptoms (as well as different placebo and dosage regimes) and no asymptomatic testing.
Was there any consistency between the trials run in each country? It doesn't appear that way.
Not really, and that is a problem when trying to analyse as one meta-analysis.
It appears safe though, and mostly effective. In the current dire situation it needs to be rolled out despite the efficacy data being substandard.
I think further trials would struggle to recruit, particularly in vulnerable populations. We are probably going to have to depend on post market surveillance.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
England was European before it was British too. Britishness is a recent invention.
We all come from Tanzania, Mr Blackford.
Not necessarily. That's where the fossils have been found - not quite the same thing.
I live in an evidence-based world.....
Quite.The limitations of the evidence and how it can be analysed have to be taken into account.
Firstly, fossils are only preserved in an environment which favours them; and also one has to look.
Secondly, as a fundamental matter of classificatory and phylogenetic principle since the cladistics revolution of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove an ancestor-descendant relationship as such. Of course, in practice your fossil may end up being so similar to the reconstructed hypothetical ancestral form that it might as well be the same thing - or, crucially indistinguishably, its close relative.
So the question is whether the line that led to modern humans led through the Rift Valley or lived in, say, an environment where fossils were not preserved easily (e.g. jungle), or conversely a location of which the deposits have been destroyed (erosion, glaciation, submergence, etc.).
Did the cladistics revolution of the 1970s really establish that, or did it just stipulate it? It strikes me as largely a bit of biologists' physics envy (as in, Darwin = Newton and we want an Einstein). I am very comfortable with the idea that a fossil can prove an ancestor-descendant relationship beyond reasonable doubt, and I don't see much force in the objection that, ok, the actual fossil many have been a great^n aunt rather than a direct ancestor.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
Because then British starts before the 17th Century which makes Blackford wrong.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
England was European before it was British too. Britishness is a recent invention.
We all come from Tanzania, Mr Blackford.
Not necessarily. That's where the fossils have been found - not quite the same thing.
I live in an evidence-based world.....
Quite.The limitations of the evidence and how it can be analysed have to be taken into account.
Firstly, fossils are only preserved in an environment which favours them; and also one has to look.
Secondly, as a fundamental matter of classificatory and phylogenetic principle since the cladistics revolution of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove an ancestor-descendant relationship as such. Of course, in practice your fossil may end up being so similar to the reconstructed hypothetical ancestral form that it might as well be the same thing - or, crucially indistinguishably, its close relative.
So the question is whether the line that led to modern humans led through the Rift Valley or lived in, say, an environment where fossils were not preserved easily (e.g. jungle), or conversely a location of which the deposits have been destroyed (erosion, glaciation, submergence, etc.).
Among other things, the a single fossil find (now lost) means that we may/may not have have found evidence of the largest animal that ever lived.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
Because then British starts before the 17th Century which makes Blackford wrong.
Perhaps just stick to what the Iceni called themselves then.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
According to your view of history, the American Indians never ruled over North America. I can only ever describe them as occupying the territory they now have -- the pitiful Indian reservations, to which they are now confined.
In fact, before the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous Native American tribes occupied all of North America.
Similarly, before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the indigenous Brythonic Celtic (or Welsh) tribes occupied almost all of present day England.
Boudicca was culturally a Brythonic Celt, or Welsh.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
Because then British starts before the 17th Century which makes Blackford wrong.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
According to your view of history, the American Indians never ruled over North America. I can only ever describe them as occupying the territory they now have -- the pitiful Indian reservations, to which they are now confined.
In fact, before the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous Native American tribes occupied all of North America.
Similarly, before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the indigenous Brythonic Celtic (or Welsh) tribes occupied almost all of present day England.
Boudicca was culturally a Brythonic Celt, or Welsh.
I think Foxy is making the opposite point - that "Wales" is the equivalent of the Indian reservations in your analogy.
It isn't a great look to be saying we approve this, but we are very reluctant to give any hard figures and there is this data we won't share with you. But needs must. It clearly works ok (and the big thing that is hardly getting a mention is zero hospitalizations after 3 weeks) and we can't wait.
Putting it simply, given a choice between this and the Pfizer vaccine today, the latter would be a no brainier.
But given the choice between getting the AZN vaccine now, and the Pfizer vaccine in maybe six months’ time, the former is the far better choice, both on an individual and population level. I’d very happily get it today if I could.
They can’t give you hard data because they simply haven’t accumulated enough on the delayed booster shot. We and the rest of the world will have a great deal of data in a few months time, so we’re doing the planet a massive favour, too. Especially as the AZN is one if the very, very few which will be available on a mass basis for less developed nations.
Yes, I'm not saying I personally wouldn't get it if I was given the opportunity. My issue is the way that AZ have conducted the trial. It looks like amateur hour from the outside. Changing the placebo, messing up the doses, oddly variable time between jabs. It all feels a bit amateur. What's more is that they created a rod for their own back with test first symptoms after which means something like the sniffles got recorded as having symptoms. Which wouldn't have been recorded in the other two trials.
This has been a bit farcical and now we find out that mass manufacturing isn't ready either. A 9-12 week delay for a new trial would be warranted IMO and the MHRA are going to look stupid when the FDA insists on one.
I don’t think so - they will still vaccinate millions in those 9-12 weeks (and in reality it would be significantly longer than that to run another trial which produced solid evidence). What the FDA might insist in is irrelevant for the half of the world which might benefit from thus.
And the variable time between jabs appears to have thrown up useful evidence on what might be optimal. AZN isn’t really a vaccines company, which would go some way to explaining why a set of trials run at unusual speed was a bit if a mess. It’s perhaps a shame that GSK didn’t partner with Imperial rather than (or as well as) Sanofi.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
On that basis, using the extent of Anglo-Saxon settlement from the Norman period onwards, the present boundaries of "Wales" should start somewhere well to the West of Wrexham and well to the North of Swansea.
You could come to the same conclusion based on participation in the English Football League, but sadly not the English Premier League despite no want of trying.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
So, British?
I don't really know what you mean by the ovate word "British".
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
The Iceni with Brythonic Celts. They spoke a language related to Old Welsh.
IANAE but my recollection is that Boudicca's husband was a ruler in Norfolk and that her rebellion was principally in East Anglia. As she was a queen of the Iceni I am struggling to see how that makes them Welsh, as opposed to Britons (many of whom may have spoken a language more related to Welsh than other current languages). Happy to have the error of my ways explained.
Welsh is a bit of an anachronism here. The entire population of Great Britain south of the Forth seems to have spoken a language ancestral to to modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton. And the Picts probably spoke something similar. Welsh is simply the Old English for "foreign" so should really not be used for the Roman period.
That's really what I was saying. I do not think it is correct geographically or meaningful generally to claim the Iceni were Welsh.
The big take away from the press conference, you are getting what you are getting. There is not going to be any delineation of most vulnerable getting Pfizer, the rest getting AZN. It is going to be based on where they can get vaccines to and how quickly.
Its a big call. I can only imagine the press reaction if some 80 year old gets the AZN one and then dies....given how piss poor the media are at understanding stats and probabilities.
Big problem coming here imho. Given there is, shall we say, a little controversy over how actual cause of death is being handled in this pandemic, I can see an issue looming.
The message was specifically about the AZN vaccine and FrancisUrquart's mission on here to take a pop at the AZN-Oxford trials. He was referring to the way that this contrasts unfavourably with the Pfizer one which was the perfect model.
This 88 year old was not given AZN. He received the Pfizer one.
Which was my point. This will happen with every vaccine.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
Because then British starts before the 17th Century which makes Blackford wrong.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
Are you sure you don't mean that the Welsh were Iceni (and other Celtic tribes).
What evidence is there that the Iceni originated in Wales?
What were the boundaries of Wales when there was no England?
There was no England, because there were no Anglo-Saxons on the island that we call Great Britain.
They had not yet arrived.
To define the whole of the landmass as Wales is rather to distort what we mean by Wales.
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
According to your view of history, the American Indians never ruled over North America. I can only ever describe them as occupying the territory they now have -- the pitiful Indian reservations, to which they are now confined.
In fact, before the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous Native American tribes occupied all of North America.
Similarly, before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the indigenous Brythonic Celtic (or Welsh) tribes occupied almost all of present day England.
Boudicca was culturally a Brythonic Celt, or Welsh.
I think Foxy is making the opposite point - that "Wales" is the equivalent of the Indian reservations in your analogy.
Yes.
Though as genetics shows the level of genetic continuity in East Anglia (as presently defined) goes back to neolithic times, then perhaps it just means that the English are Welsh too.
Personally, I have never been a fan of such lineage tracing. It does rather lead to the idea of newer arrivals being illegitimate in some way in their claims to an equal stake in modern Britain.
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
If circumstances have changed (and leaving the EU is a massive change for Scotland) then logic dictates you allow another referendum now. Where is the logic in waiting 20 years?
Can you demonstrate the logic? It doesn’t follow.
Constitutional decisions are for an extended period of time. It helps no one to have repeated votes and continuous agitation. (20 is arbitrary but 15-30 would be reasonable. 40 feels too long and 10 too short)
No that does not follow and never has followed.
Decisions are for one Parliament only. Always have been. No Parliament can bind its successor.
Where does an "extended period of time" come from? What constitutional settlement or principle determines that?
The principle is no revote until Westminster authorises it
I personally think that, every so often, the people should be given a chance to bless the constitutional set up. The EU referendum was long over due, for example.
The length of time is a question of practicality. It clearly makes no sense to have a vote every month. And 5 years would just lead to perpetual campaigning and instability. But there’s no particular magic to 20 years
I know what you’re getting at. This is a massive decision. You can’t have the SNP tracking opinion polls 24/7 and nipping in for a quick plebiscite every time they think they have a sniff until finally, at the umpteenth time of asking on almost an annual basis, they score 51% and lo, bob’s your uncle and Scotland leaves the UK. That would be crazy.
But the situation we have is not that. It’s nothing like it. The moral case for another Sindy referendum is that there has been, since 2014, an absolute slam dunk of a “material change in circumstances”. Scotland is being yanked out of the EU against its clear and settled will.
But this is not enough. There must be a democratic case too and this is not yet made. Sure, there are opinion polls, but they are “soft”. The hard democratic mandate for Sindy2 will come, if it does, from an SNP majority at Holyrood won with Sindy2 at the heart of its manifesto and campaign. If that happens, it’s a done deal as regards the argument. Johnson may resist the logic but if he does he will be in a bad place.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
The big take away from the press conference, you are getting what you are getting. There is not going to be any delineation of most vulnerable getting Pfizer, the rest getting AZN. It is going to be based on where they can get vaccines to and how quickly.
Its a big call. I can only imagine the press reaction if some 80 year old gets the AZN one and then dies....given how piss poor the media are at understanding stats and probabilities.
Big problem coming here imho. Given there is, shall we say, a little controversy over how actual cause of death is being handled in this pandemic, I can see an issue looming.
The message was specifically about the AZN vaccine and FrancisUrquart's mission on here to take a pop at the AZN-Oxford trials. He was referring to the way that this contrasts unfavourably with the Pfizer one which was the perfect model.
This 88 year old was not given AZN. He received the Pfizer one.
Which was my point. This will happen with every vaccine.
Luckily they don't have idiots like Peston there to blow these things completely out of proportion.
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
Such as holding rerun general elections in 2017 and 2019 because the party that won them didn't like the result. That kind of thing.
No.
Yes Charles. Yes.
No.
A referendum on the constitutional rules is not the same as an election of a representative body with a tone limited mandate
It is absolutely the same. It is something that can be voted on by the Parliament and no Parliament is bound by any predecessor.
If the Lib Dems won the 2019 Referendum then Brexit would have been cancelled. Because Parliamentary elections trump any prior referendum or election and aren't bound to anything prior. Same principle applies for 2021. No Parliament is bound by its predecessors.
Sovereignty is delegated to parliament. Once parliament asks for and receives an explicit instruction it trumps any delegated authority.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
70% from 21 days after the first dose before the second.
What I can't remember is what the effectiveness of the Pfizer jab after one dose was supposed to be. AZ might actually have an advantage here.
No. In the period of time before the booster it was over 90%. Hence the suggestions that it be used as a single shot (despite no longer term data on that).
I think Foxy is making the opposite point - that "Wales" is the equivalent of the Indian reservations in your analogy.
I don't describe Sitting Bull as a Mid-Westerner because the territory he once ruled over is now North and South Dakota. I describe him as a Native American.
Ditto Boudicca. She is not an East Anglian. She is Welsh.
(I agree present-day Wales is an Indian reservation).
“One problem already is that different regional NHS authorities of the country seem to be handling this with different timetables.”
Do you have any evidence to support this claim, otherwise can the header be accused as being spin and mischief making?
Certainly around where I am it seems to only getting distributed and people getting it in the posh area’s of the town. And people are saying this, it’s only the posh sods getting it first.
But is this just misconception, rather like “let them eat cake”. I mean, if it relies on regional NHS authorities that is better structurally and less under pressure in wealthier places than in poorer regions, that at least would be a credible reason why the posh sods are getting it first in the main?
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
Over 85+ are at over 400 admissions per day
65-84 at 800
1.6 million over 85s - vaccinate them, admissions go down by 25% 10 million 65-84 - vaccinate them as well, admissions go down by 75%
Do we have any idea whether x% effectiveness means
(1) "x% of the population become immune with this vaccine, and can meet infected people all the time and never catch it" or (2) "everyone has a reduction of x% in the probability of catching the infection on any one occasion exposed to it"?
If (1) were the case, then if x is high (e.g. Pfizer's 95%), we might start behaving normally. In particular, NHS staff who meet infected people all the time might be well-prrotected. If (2) is the case then we still need to socially distance etc. until the spread drops so far that you rarely meet an infected person (because you'll still catch it if you keep meeting them, just "100-x%" of time you would have caught it before).
Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm has announced that a coronavirus vaccine it is developing is 79% effective, and said it has applied for regulatory approval.
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
If circumstances have changed (and leaving the EU is a massive change for Scotland) then logic dictates you allow another referendum now. Where is the logic in waiting 20 years?
Can you demonstrate the logic? It doesn’t follow.
Constitutional decisions are for an extended period of time. It helps no one to have repeated votes and continuous agitation. (20 is arbitrary but 15-30 would be reasonable. 40 feels too long and 10 too short)
No that does not follow and never has followed.
Decisions are for one Parliament only. Always have been. No Parliament can bind its successor.
Where does an "extended period of time" come from? What constitutional settlement or principle determines that?
The principle is no revote until Westminster authorises it
I personally think that, every so often, the people should be given a chance to bless the constitutional set up. The EU referendum was long over due, for example.
The length of time is a question of practicality. It clearly makes no sense to have a vote every month. And 5 years would just lead to perpetual campaigning and instability. But there’s no particular magic to 20 years
We do have perpetual campaigning and instability it is called democracy.
If the public don't want a particular style of campaigning and instability they will punish those parties advocating it - as happened in 2019 when the public punished the parties disrespecting the prior vote and wanted it "done" - but that is for the public to decide at elections.
Westminster can and should authorise it based upon the votes of Scottish voters at Scottish elections. If the Scottish voters deny the SNP (and fellow travellers) a majority then that is democracy. That the SNP want one will have been rejected by the electorate, que sera sera. Let the voters decide.
So you are saying that reserved powers have no function if they must be used in accordance with the Scottish parliament wishes. So why did the sovereign Westminster parliament include them if it wasn’t to allow future parliaments to use their judgement?
Am I right in thinking that one of the downsides with the Oxford vaccine is you can only have it once, because of the delivery mechanism means if you try and use the same mechanism again the body will fight it off?
Thus, if it doesn't work against Cockney Covid, unlike Pfizer vaccine, it can't quickly be tinkered with and we go around jabbing people again?
It's not as simple as that, there will be some vector immunity, however the vector can be quite easily edited to evade the existing immune response. The question is whether regulators would insist on completely new PI/II safety trials because it's a new vector, they probably wouldn't for mRNA vaccines.
Once again, not backing the Imperial mRNA vaccine is the issue no one seems to be addressing here, we had a potential homegrown candidate as good as Pfizer and Moderna with the same quick editable vector but we seem to have passed it up.
You send to be assuming it wasn’t considered and discarded?
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
If circumstances have changed (and leaving the EU is a massive change for Scotland) then logic dictates you allow another referendum now. Where is the logic in waiting 20 years?
Can you demonstrate the logic? It doesn’t follow.
Constitutional decisions are for an extended period of time. It helps no one to have repeated votes and continuous agitation. (20 is arbitrary but 15-30 would be reasonable. 40 feels too long and 10 too short)
No that does not follow and never has followed.
Decisions are for one Parliament only. Always have been. No Parliament can bind its successor.
Where does an "extended period of time" come from? What constitutional settlement or principle determines that?
The principle is no revote until Westminster authorises it
I personally think that, every so often, the people should be given a chance to bless the constitutional set up. The EU referendum was long over due, for example.
The length of time is a question of practicality. It clearly makes no sense to have a vote every month. And 5 years would just lead to perpetual campaigning and instability. But there’s no particular magic to 20 years
I know what you’re getting at. This is a massive decision. You can’t have the SNP tracking opinion polls 24/7 and nipping in for a quick plebiscite every time they think they have a sniff until finally, at the umpteenth time of asking on almost an annual basis, they score 51% and lo, bob’s your uncle and Scotland leaves the UK. That would be crazy.
But the situation we have is not that. It’s nothing like it. The moral case for another Sindy referendum is that there has been, since 2014, an absolute slam dunk of a “material change in circumstances”. Scotland is being yanked out of the EU against its clear and settled will.
But this is not enough. There must be a democratic case too and this is not yet made. Sure, there are opinion polls, but they are “soft”. The hard democratic mandate for Sindy2 will come, if it does, from an SNP majority at Holyrood won with Sindy2 at the heart of its manifesto and campaign. If that happens, it’s a done deal as regards the argument. Johnson may resist the logic but if he does he will be in a bad place.
I agree. If the SNP and other pro independence parties get a majority in May, then they should have another referendum.
I suspect that whichever way it goes, it would be the last one for a long time. If the SNP lose this one, it would be more like post 1979 than post 2014. If they win, obviously it would be the last.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
Starmer is making a mistake. Labour is making a mistake. They are in the same lobby as Steve Baker. Disgusting decision.
Instead of respecting Democracy they are playing political games.
To believe in democracy you have to believe everyone in parliament can vote with their conscience on what they think of the deal, for the country and their constituents, without the weapon of no deal held to their heads.
If then it passes, it passes. That’s democracy saying yes. And, if governments deal can’t pass despite an eighty seat majority over all other parties, democracy is saying no.
Is that all Labour is now, a split between unreconstructed IRA loving Marxists or ambitious New Labour sell outs? If so then it is toast. This is the day history will point to as the day Labour became toast.
Obviously I disagree, but even from an opposition perspective, isn't there a strong argument for playing this with a straight bat? If the deal failed to be ratified by Parliament, we would be in a No deal situation. Yes, with a Tory majority that's unlikely, but I think the public respects voting for the actual preferred outcome, not grandstanding. Nobody blamed Boris for the letter he had to write, and I don't think voters will blame Starmer for the deal he must now support.
1.6 million over 85s - vaccinate them, admissions go down by 25% 10 million 65-84 - vaccinate them as well, admissions go down by 75%
Precisely within a matter of weeks we ought to be able to vaccinate the group that sources a quarter of hospitalisations and an even larger proportion of deaths. With one of the worst superspreader sources in the entire nation when it comes to hospitalisations covered too.
No matter what you do care homes will always be a superspreader event. Social distancing is impossible when dealing with dementia residents - hard to wipe someone's bum or feed someone from two metres away. And if a care home has 150 staff all living in the community and 1% of the community is infected (per ONS) in a week then it is virtually impossible to stop the virus repeatedly re-entering homes.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
We have done. Second doses only started yesterday.
I sense she is above all else a Conservative Party loyalist, so will be pleased enough, but I'd be surprised if there were not some less charitable sentiment in there too.
This bloke who brought me down and replaced me, saying my Deal was rubbish, goes and agrees the sort of noddy Deal I could have done in 10 minutes if I'd have dropped my "protect the economy and the constitutional integrity of the UK" red line, and gets cheered to the rafters for it.
Is it cos I am not a 'born to rule' public school chancer unencumbered by a sense of duty and public service?
Prediction is so much easier after the speech has been made....
So she DID say pretty much what I postulated then, did she? Reacted as a human being rather than an automaton. No longer the Maybot. Good for her.
I don’t think you have much credibility after being a full 3 hours wrong on the timing of the Deal announcement...
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
It isn't wasted when the doctors and nurses are being overwhelmed by cases that these doses will take an immediate and major impact in preventing new cases arriving in the hospitals.
Starmer is making a mistake. Labour is making a mistake. They are in the same lobby as Steve Baker. Disgusting decision.
Instead of respecting Democracy they are playing political games.
To believe in democracy you have to believe everyone in parliament can vote with their conscience on what they think of the deal, for the country and their constituents, without the weapon of no deal held to their heads.
If then it passes, it passes. That’s democracy saying yes. And, if governments deal can’t pass despite an eighty seat majority over all other parties, democracy is saying no.
Is that all Labour is now, a split between unreconstructed IRA loving Marxists or ambitious New Labour sell outs? If so then it is toast. This is the day history will point to as the day Labour became toast.
Obviously I disagree, but even from an opposition perspective, isn't there a strong argument for playing this with a straight bat? If the deal failed to be ratified by Parliament, we would be in a No deal situation. Yes, with a Tory majority that's unlikely, but I think the public respects voting for the actual preferred outcome, not grandstanding. Nobody blamed Boris for the letter he had to write, and I don't think voters will blame Starmer for the deal he must now support.
Let’s deal with how history views this.
2016 Labour leadership and front bench do not campaign very hard for Remain. It’s almost like they have always believed in brexit.
2017 Labour stand in GE on slim majority of voters in a flawed direct democracy vote have spoken a brexit means brexit platform.
2019 any chance of a sensible as possible soft brexit slaughtered by Labour. Any chance of a confirmatory vote slaughtered by Labour.
2020 ambitious slimy pole climbing New Labour leadership vote for and ensure hardest of brexit endorsing slimmest of deals.
Conclusion. This is not a Tory Brexit. Labour has the blood of British economy on its hands. As households and government coffers become poorer Labour has that blood on its hands too.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
So, British?
I don't really know what you mean by the ovate word "British".
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
The Iceni with Brythonic Celts. They spoke a language related to Old Welsh.
IANAE but my recollection is that Boudicca's husband was a ruler in Norfolk and that her rebellion was principally in East Anglia. As she was a queen of the Iceni I am struggling to see how that makes them Welsh, as opposed to Britons (many of whom may have spoken a language more related to Welsh than other current languages). Happy to have the error of my ways explained.
Welsh is a bit of an anachronism here. The entire population of Great Britain south of the Forth seems to have spoken a language ancestral to to modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton. And the Picts probably spoke something similar. Welsh is simply the Old English for "foreign" so should really not be used for the Roman period.
That's really what I was saying. I do not think it is correct geographically or meaningful generally to claim the Iceni were Welsh.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
We have done. Second doses only started yesterday.
I think that MaxPB is referring to the policy of
- 75% over 80s - 20% care home staff - 5% for NHS staff
Do we have any idea whether x% effectiveness means
(1) "x% of the population become immune with this vaccine, and can meet infected people all the time and never catch it" or (2) "everyone has a reduction of x% in the probability of catching the infection on any one occasion exposed to it"?
If (1) were the case, then if x is high (e.g. Pfizer's 95%), we might start behaving normally. In particular, NHS staff who meet infected people all the time might be well-prrotected. If (2) is the case then we still need to socially distance etc. until the spread drops so far that you rarely meet an infected person (because you'll still catch it if you keep meeting them, just "100-x%" of time you would have caught it before).
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can answer this?
I was discussing this with our management yesterday. We cannot stop socially distancing and other precautions until Easter at least was their view. Presumably that includes isolating etc.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
No - he is referring to the alliance networks, I imagine, also cultural ones (e.g. universities). Britain as a modern history thingy didn't happen till 1603 and/or 1707.
Britain as an actual placey thingy, rather than a political construct, existed rather longer ago. Were the Iceni not British?
The Iceni were Welsh.
So, British?
I don't really know what you mean by the ovate word "British".
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
The Iceni with Brythonic Celts. They spoke a language related to Old Welsh.
IANAE but my recollection is that Boudicca's husband was a ruler in Norfolk and that her rebellion was principally in East Anglia. As she was a queen of the Iceni I am struggling to see how that makes them Welsh, as opposed to Britons (many of whom may have spoken a language more related to Welsh than other current languages). Happy to have the error of my ways explained.
The welsh claim they are the remnants of the losers. A bit like Trumpers still holding out in Akansas
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
If circumstances have changed (and leaving the EU is a massive change for Scotland) then logic dictates you allow another referendum now. Where is the logic in waiting 20 years?
Can you demonstrate the logic? It doesn’t follow.
Constitutional decisions are for an extended period of time. It helps no one to have repeated votes and continuous agitation. (20 is arbitrary but 15-30 would be reasonable. 40 feels too long and 10 too short)
No that does not follow and never has followed.
Decisions are for one Parliament only. Always have been. No Parliament can bind its successor.
Where does an "extended period of time" come from? What constitutional settlement or principle determines that?
The principle is no revote until Westminster authorises it
I personally think that, every so often, the people should be given a chance to bless the constitutional set up. The EU referendum was long over due, for example.
The length of time is a question of practicality. It clearly makes no sense to have a vote every month. And 5 years would just lead to perpetual campaigning and instability. But there’s no particular magic to 20 years
We do have perpetual campaigning and instability it is called democracy.
If the public don't want a particular style of campaigning and instability they will punish those parties advocating it - as happened in 2019 when the public punished the parties disrespecting the prior vote and wanted it "done" - but that is for the public to decide at elections.
Westminster can and should authorise it based upon the votes of Scottish voters at Scottish elections. If the Scottish voters deny the SNP (and fellow travellers) a majority then that is democracy. That the SNP want one will have been rejected by the electorate, que sera sera. Let the voters decide.
So you are saying that reserved powers have no function if they must be used in accordance with the Scottish parliament wishes. So why did the sovereign Westminster parliament include them if it wasn’t to allow future parliaments to use their judgement?
No I am not.
A referendum going to Yes doesn't end the Union. The Scottish Government will still need to negotiate an exit agreement with Westminster and Westminster will control how that occurs.
If it wasn't reserved then the SNP could have just issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence even without a referendum.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
What's the point in hospitals if there's no doctors and nurses to run them? Too many are getting isolation notices right now and sadly both are highly likely to be unknowing super spreaders. Vaccinating them should have been priority one, everyone else should have been after that. Right now we could have vaccinated well, well over 1m NHS front line staff with the Pfizer vaccine, instead we've got complicated logistics and a much slower roll out to old people and not enough of them to make any real difference to the hospitalisation rate.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
Over 85+ are at over 400 admissions per day
65-84 at 800
1.6 million over 85s - vaccinate them, admissions go down by 25% 10 million 65-84 - vaccinate them as well, admissions go down by 75%
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
We have done. Second doses only started yesterday.
I'm saying that all doses should be doing to the NHS until all front line staff have been jabbed. No point in hospitals with no doctors and nurses, which according to family in the NHS front line is what's happening.
Starmer is making a mistake. Labour is making a mistake. They are in the same lobby as Steve Baker. Disgusting decision.
Instead of respecting Democracy they are playing political games.
To believe in democracy you have to believe everyone in parliament can vote with their conscience on what they think of the deal, for the country and their constituents, without the weapon of no deal held to their heads.
If then it passes, it passes. That’s democracy saying yes. And, if governments deal can’t pass despite an eighty seat majority over all other parties, democracy is saying no.
Is that all Labour is now, a split between unreconstructed IRA loving Marxists or ambitious New Labour sell outs? If so then it is toast. This is the day history will point to as the day Labour became toast.
Obviously I disagree, but even from an opposition perspective, isn't there a strong argument for playing this with a straight bat? If the deal failed to be ratified by Parliament, we would be in a No deal situation. Yes, with a Tory majority that's unlikely, but I think the public respects voting for the actual preferred outcome, not grandstanding. Nobody blamed Boris for the letter he had to write, and I don't think voters will blame Starmer for the deal he must now support.
Let’s deal with how history views this.
2016 Labour leadership and front bench do not campaign very hard for Remain. It’s almost like they have always believed in brexit.
2017 Labour stand in GE on slim majority of voters in a flawed direct democracy vote have spoken a brexit means brexit platform.
2019 any chance of a sensible as possible soft brexit slaughtered by Labour. Any chance of a confirmatory vote slaughtered by Labour.
2020 ambitious slimy pole climbing New Labour leadership vote for and ensure hardest of brexit endorsing slimmest of deals.
Conclusion. This is not a Tory Brexit. Labour has the blood of British economy on its hands. As households and government coffers become poorer Labour has that blood on its hands too.
The referendum was not a "flawed direct democracy vote". You lose your readers by making that point.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
What's the point in hospitals if there's no doctors and nurses to run them? Too many are getting isolation notices right now and sadly both are highly likely to be unknowing super spreaders. Vaccinating them should have been priority one, everyone else should have been after that. Right now we could have vaccinated well, well over 1m NHS front line staff with the Pfizer vaccine, instead we've got complicated logistics and a much slower roll out to old people and not enough of them to make any real difference to the hospitalisation rate.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
Except the doctors and nurses are being prioritised over 80% of pensioners.
The only patients being prioritised over doctors and nurses are the extremely vulnerable who have been sourcing a quarter of all hospitalisation, an even higher proportion of deaths and are major superspreaders.
Reducing the demand on doctors and nurses by 25% will have an immediate benefit to those doctors and nurses.
Scotland was European before it was British, according to Mr Blackford.
What does he mean? That the first Scots came from Ireland?
England was European before it was British too. Britishness is a recent invention.
We all come from Tanzania, Mr Blackford.
Not necessarily. That's where the fossils have been found - not quite the same thing.
I live in an evidence-based world.....
Quite.The limitations of the evidence and how it can be analysed have to be taken into account.
Firstly, fossils are only preserved in an environment which favours them; and also one has to look.
Secondly, as a fundamental matter of classificatory and phylogenetic principle since the cladistics revolution of the 1970s, it is impossible to prove an ancestor-descendant relationship as such. Of course, in practice your fossil may end up being so similar to the reconstructed hypothetical ancestral form that it might as well be the same thing - or, crucially indistinguishably, its close relative.
So the question is whether the line that led to modern humans led through the Rift Valley or lived in, say, an environment where fossils were not preserved easily (e.g. jungle), or conversely a location of which the deposits have been destroyed (erosion, glaciation, submergence, etc.).
Did the cladistics revolution of the 1970s really establish that, or did it just stipulate it? It strikes me as largely a bit of biologists' physics envy (as in, Darwin = Newton and we want an Einstein). I am very comfortable with the idea that a fossil can prove an ancestor-descendant relationship beyond reasonable doubt, and I don't see much force in the objection that, ok, the actual fossil many have been a great^n aunt rather than a direct ancestor.
Wasn't physics envy (I was a student at the crucial time and read up a lot about it). Can't very well be - it makes evolutionary analysis even more of a historical, contingent science - and even less like physics, is my reaction.
Establish/stipulate - both, in a sense. Methodology was both advanced and made the norm.
IIRC it was a reaction if anything to the sloppiness of the old handwaving approximations of missing link, affinities with, ancestor of, sort of statement. It made evolutionists and palaeontologsits much more careful in their assertions, and much more precise, about their hypotheses of relationships. More disprovable. More scientific. Also made them explicitly state their analyses up front. And that of course also leads to attention to the inherent limitations of the analysis. And going beyond them is never a great thing.
(And it applied btw just as much to zoologists working from living animals alone without useful fossils - in fact Hennig the chap who got much of this going was an entomologist IIRC).
Do we have any idea whether x% effectiveness means
(1) "x% of the population become immune with this vaccine, and can meet infected people all the time and never catch it" or (2) "everyone has a reduction of x% in the probability of catching the infection on any one occasion exposed to it"?
If (1) were the case, then if x is high (e.g. Pfizer's 95%), we might start behaving normally. In particular, NHS staff who meet infected people all the time might be well-prrotected. If (2) is the case then we still need to socially distance etc. until the spread drops so far that you rarely meet an infected person (because you'll still catch it if you keep meeting them, just "100-x%" of time you would have caught it before).
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can answer this?
Very interesting question. Hope others more viro'd up answer but here is my take -
A vax effectiveness of 90% means that if I take it my risk of becoming infected is 10% of what it would be if I did not take it. So, for example, if my condition and lifestyle means I have a 50% chance of getting Covid in the next 3 months, if I take the vaccine, all else being equal, my chance of getting it drops to 5%.
And then hopefully the vax does 2 other things for me. It reduces the chance of me getting VERY sick if I do get the virus. And it stops me somehow spreading it despite not having it.
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
If circumstances have changed (and leaving the EU is a massive change for Scotland) then logic dictates you allow another referendum now. Where is the logic in waiting 20 years?
Can you demonstrate the logic? It doesn’t follow.
Constitutional decisions are for an extended period of time. It helps no one to have repeated votes and continuous agitation. (20 is arbitrary but 15-30 would be reasonable. 40 feels too long and 10 too short)
No that does not follow and never has followed.
Decisions are for one Parliament only. Always have been. No Parliament can bind its successor.
Where does an "extended period of time" come from? What constitutional settlement or principle determines that?
The principle is no revote until Westminster authorises it
I personally think that, every so often, the people should be given a chance to bless the constitutional set up. The EU referendum was long over due, for example.
The length of time is a question of practicality. It clearly makes no sense to have a vote every month. And 5 years would just lead to perpetual campaigning and instability. But there’s no particular magic to 20 years
And there’s even less particular magic to your personal opinion.
That’s the nature of a politics discussion board though - people post opinions
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
We have done. Second doses only started yesterday.
I'm saying that all doses should be doing to the NHS until all front line staff have been jabbed. No point in hospitals with no doctors and nurses, which according to family in the NHS front line is what's happening.
I don't think any hospitals have 'no doctors and nurses', they may be seeing more patients than those doctors and nurses would like - and preventing a quarter of the patients from arriving in the hospital in the first place will reduce the strain on those doctors and nurses that are there dramatically.
Especially since that quarter of hospitalisations are more likely to get seriously ill, end in ICU and/or die.
Reducing 25% of ambulances call outs and hospitalisations from this will have an immediate impact.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
What's the point in hospitals if there's no doctors and nurses to run them? Too many are getting isolation notices right now and sadly both are highly likely to be unknowing super spreaders. Vaccinating them should have been priority one, everyone else should have been after that. Right now we could have vaccinated well, well over 1m NHS front line staff with the Pfizer vaccine, instead we've got complicated logistics and a much slower roll out to old people and not enough of them to make any real difference to the hospitalisation rate.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
Except the doctors and nurses are being prioritised over 80% of pensioners.
The only patients being prioritised over doctors and nurses are the extremely vulnerable who have been sourcing a quarter of all hospitalisation, an even higher proportion of deaths and are major superspreaders.
Reducing the demand on doctors and nurses by 25% will have an immediate benefit to those doctors and nurses.
But we're not reducing demand on hospitals by 25%, we're not even close to that situation. If we had unlimited capacity and no logistical concerns then sure, the government strategy makes sense. As it stands we're reducing hospitalisation by maybe 5-6% and at the same time doctors and nurses are being given isolation notices meaning wards are running on empty and those who remain on them are exhausted.
We're asking doctors and nurses to take extraordinary risks, we have vaccine doses available and yet we're giving them to other people. It's morally wrong and it's going to leave us with hospitals and no staff by the middle of January.
Do we have any idea whether x% effectiveness means
(1) "x% of the population become immune with this vaccine, and can meet infected people all the time and never catch it" or (2) "everyone has a reduction of x% in the probability of catching the infection on any one occasion exposed to it"?
If (1) were the case, then if x is high (e.g. Pfizer's 95%), we might start behaving normally. In particular, NHS staff who meet infected people all the time might be well-prrotected. If (2) is the case then we still need to socially distance etc. until the spread drops so far that you rarely meet an infected person (because you'll still catch it if you keep meeting them, just "100-x%" of time you would have caught it before).
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can answer this?
Very interesting question. Hope others more viro'd up answer but here is my take -
A vax effectiveness of 90% means that if I take it my risk of becoming infected is 10% of what it would be if I did not take it.
So, for example, if my condition and lifestyle means I have a 50% chance of getting Covid in the next 3 months, if I take the vaccine, all else being equal, my chance of getting it drops to 5%.
And then hopefully the vax does 2 other things for me. It reduces the chance of me getting VERY sick if I do get it. And it stops me somehow spreading it despite not having it.
From the national as opposed to the personal interest it is really the first of these "other things" that is the key. If you are unlucky enough to catch the virus anyway despite your improved chances you are unlikely to need hospital treatment.
Starmer is making a mistake. Labour is making a mistake. They are in the same lobby as Steve Baker. Disgusting decision.
Instead of respecting Democracy they are playing political games.
To believe in democracy you have to believe everyone in parliament can vote with their conscience on what they think of the deal, for the country and their constituents, without the weapon of no deal held to their heads.
If then it passes, it passes. That’s democracy saying yes. And, if governments deal can’t pass despite an eighty seat majority over all other parties, democracy is saying no.
Is that all Labour is now, a split between unreconstructed IRA loving Marxists or ambitious New Labour sell outs? If so then it is toast. This is the day history will point to as the day Labour became toast.
Obviously I disagree, but even from an opposition perspective, isn't there a strong argument for playing this with a straight bat? If the deal failed to be ratified by Parliament, we would be in a No deal situation. Yes, with a Tory majority that's unlikely, but I think the public respects voting for the actual preferred outcome, not grandstanding. Nobody blamed Boris for the letter he had to write, and I don't think voters will blame Starmer for the deal he must now support.
Let’s deal with what happens if parliament says no today. And tomorrow.
If parliament says no, Boris can speak to EU to roll on the transition. It is a discussion and agreement that will only take a couple of minutes. No one in power either side the channel creates no deal when alternatives are possible. Simples.
It’s not panto season with anyone saying “oh no he can’t” because, yes he can. It’s exactly the same as with May’s deal when she said it’s this or nothing, but ended up in that third option to re open the in un-reopenable.
it’s is NOT a binary choice about picking the lesser of two evils in the national interest. Starmer is a liar. He needs to be called out on this.
If parliament doesn’t pass it before the 1st it’s not inevitably no deal brexit. That is a lie. That is a lie by scoundrels. It can be more transition, would EU say no to more transition if parliament reject and government asked for hasty transition extension?
Is there anyone on PB this afternoon claiming it’s this deal or no deal, no other options? Come on speak up and say it. We are up for it. We’ll have you. Deals of this magnitude passing the commons because the clocks run down. Yeah that’s democracy.
There is no way any opposition party can whip this. There is not a single reason any MP of any party should feel there is a gun to their head if they don’t like this deal and don’t want to vote for it.
The Government have an EIGHTY SEAT majority, and it’s government alone who have negotiated it, created the deal. If the only way they can get votes for it is they have run the clock down, that goes completely against the better democracy they claim brexit is all about. It goes against all democracy.
If you tolerate having to vote for this because the clock has run down, burning down the parliament will be next.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
We have done. Second doses only started yesterday.
I'm saying that all doses should be doing to the NHS until all front line staff have been jabbed. No point in hospitals with no doctors and nurses, which according to family in the NHS front line is what's happening.
That is the current constitutional settlement. If you don’t like it you need to change it not just set it aside
And you can change the current constitutional settlement by having a referendum...
Whether powers are reserved to Westminster or delegated to the Scottish parliament isn’t something which needs a referendum provided (theoretically at least) they can be pulled back at Westminster’s discretion
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
Such as holding rerun general elections in 2017 and 2019 because the party that won them didn't like the result. That kind of thing.
No.
Yes Charles. Yes.
No.
A referendum on the constitutional rules is not the same as an election of a representative body with a tone limited mandate
It is absolutely the same. It is something that can be voted on by the Parliament and no Parliament is bound by any predecessor.
If the Lib Dems won the 2019 Referendum then Brexit would have been cancelled. Because Parliamentary elections trump any prior referendum or election and aren't bound to anything prior. Same principle applies for 2021. No Parliament is bound by its predecessors.
Sovereignty is delegated to parliament. Once parliament asks for and receives an explicit instruction it trumps any delegated authority.
Until the next time it gets a new set of instructions.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
If the elderly could just "stay indoors" why have they been filling our hospitals?
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
We're running out of doctors and nurses to staff the hospitals. Loads of them are getting isolation notices and wards are running on fumes.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
We have done. Second doses only started yesterday.
I'm saying that all doses should be doing to the NHS until all front line staff have been jabbed. No point in hospitals with no doctors and nurses, which according to family in the NHS front line is what's happening.
I don't think any hospitals have 'no doctors and nurses', they may be seeing more patients than those doctors and nurses would like - and preventing a quarter of the patients from arriving in the hospital in the first place will reduce the strain on those doctors and nurses that are there dramatically.
Especially since that quarter of hospitalisations are more likely to get seriously ill, end in ICU and/or die.
Reducing 25% of ambulances call outs and hospitalisations from this will have an immediate impact.
It's not 25%, at 800k first shot to over 80s the reduction is maybe 5%, wards across the country are reporting they are short staffed and people in the front line are taking double shifts to cover it.
We won't get to that 25% figure until the end of January at the earliest, probably mid February at the current roll out rate. The NHS is going to collapse in between.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
What's the point in hospitals if there's no doctors and nurses to run them? Too many are getting isolation notices right now and sadly both are highly likely to be unknowing super spreaders. Vaccinating them should have been priority one, everyone else should have been after that. Right now we could have vaccinated well, well over 1m NHS front line staff with the Pfizer vaccine, instead we've got complicated logistics and a much slower roll out to old people and not enough of them to make any real difference to the hospitalisation rate.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
My daughter works for the NHS. She is not patient treating but she is getting her jab very early in the New Year. It therefore seems to me that we are prioritising NHS staff. She is 31 and perfectly healthy. She would be waiting months otherwise. But once we have the medical staff covered we need to focus our efforts on those most likely to fill the beds even if they are not the most economically productive.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
What's the point in hospitals if there's no doctors and nurses to run them? Too many are getting isolation notices right now and sadly both are highly likely to be unknowing super spreaders. Vaccinating them should have been priority one, everyone else should have been after that. Right now we could have vaccinated well, well over 1m NHS front line staff with the Pfizer vaccine, instead we've got complicated logistics and a much slower roll out to old people and not enough of them to make any real difference to the hospitalisation rate.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
Except the doctors and nurses are being prioritised over 80% of pensioners.
The only patients being prioritised over doctors and nurses are the extremely vulnerable who have been sourcing a quarter of all hospitalisation, an even higher proportion of deaths and are major superspreaders.
Reducing the demand on doctors and nurses by 25% will have an immediate benefit to those doctors and nurses.
But we're not reducing demand on hospitals by 25%, we're not even close to that situation. If we had unlimited capacity and no logistical concerns then sure, the government strategy makes sense. As it stands we're reducing hospitalisation by maybe 5-6% and at the same time doctors and nurses are being given isolation notices meaning wards are running on empty and those who remain on them are exhausted.
We're asking doctors and nurses to take extraordinary risks, we have vaccine doses available and yet we're giving them to other people. It's morally wrong and it's going to leave us with hospitals and no staff by the middle of January.
Under the current strategy "front line heath and social care workers" are Priority 2 along with the over-80s. My friend who is an A&E consultant had hers on the first day.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
And what level of effectiveness can we have “every confidence in” ?
Having read the trial documents the efficacy is an odd one to understand and easily compare. In the AZ trial because of the weekly PCR test for participants, anyone who tested positive was then assessed for symptoms and even the most minor ones such as the sniffles or a solitary headache would count towards the total number of symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm. They created a rod for their own back because not a single person out there cares about getting the sniffles or a couple of headaches or other relatively minor symptoms. Symptoms that didn't get recorded in the other trials and didn't count towards their symptomatic COVID patients in the vaccine arm.
I await the full trial data and classification of symptoms in the vaccine arm, that may actually help us to calculate efficacy of it against serious symptoms and mild symptoms rather than what may just be coincidental ones.
Basically the government got the strategy completely wrong and now they're having to try these odd strategies to ensure that hospitals are staffed properly and schools have teachers. Instead we've decided to waste our vaccines on older people who could have stayed indoors for another couple of months.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
I disagree. Our vaccine roll out is intended to mitigate the pressure on hospitals by treating those who are most likely to be hospitalised first. That seems sensible to me given the inevitable pressure the hospitals are going to be under for the next couple of months.
What's the point in hospitals if there's no doctors and nurses to run them? Too many are getting isolation notices right now and sadly both are highly likely to be unknowing super spreaders. Vaccinating them should have been priority one, everyone else should have been after that. Right now we could have vaccinated well, well over 1m NHS front line staff with the Pfizer vaccine, instead we've got complicated logistics and a much slower roll out to old people and not enough of them to make any real difference to the hospitalisation rate.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
Except the doctors and nurses are being prioritised over 80% of pensioners.
The only patients being prioritised over doctors and nurses are the extremely vulnerable who have been sourcing a quarter of all hospitalisation, an even higher proportion of deaths and are major superspreaders.
Reducing the demand on doctors and nurses by 25% will have an immediate benefit to those doctors and nurses.
But we're not reducing demand on hospitals by 25%, we're not even close to that situation. If we had unlimited capacity and no logistical concerns then sure, the government strategy makes sense. As it stands we're reducing hospitalisation by maybe 5-6% and at the same time doctors and nurses are being given isolation notices meaning wards are running on empty and those who remain on them are exhausted.
We're asking doctors and nurses to take extraordinary risks, we have vaccine doses available and yet we're giving them to other people. It's morally wrong and it's going to leave us with hospitals and no staff by the middle of January.
I agree that priority should be given to NHS staff. In fact, anyone who has any contact with NHS premises.
Our response has always been about ensuring a fully functioning NHS. "Fully" has already been degraded by the loss of so much elective surgery. Having 50% of staff down is disastrous for even the remaining Covid response to be addressed.
I would have rolled out the first vaccines to hospitals. Within 48 hours, everybody not self-isolating, done. It is full of people who can administer a. Then those self-isolating - most will be a precautionary non-Covid anyway. By mid-January, we have a largely Covid-protected NHS. Build upwards from there.
» show previous quotes So Scotland should leave the EU with no deal?
Scotland should have remained in the EU and will be back in as soon as possible after independence. Unfortunately being a colony we were forced out by our Colonial Masters against our will.
Brexit makes the case for independence unanswerable. 55% of Scots wanted to stay in the UK, but 62% wanted to stay in the EU. We were dragged out by the English. It has switched me from Unionist to Nationalist.
Not really 'unanswerable'. It depends how much importance you attach to membership of each? The turnout for the EU referendum was much lower than for the 2014 one.
Most Scots didn't expect the English to vote to leave, so there wasn't the urgency to vote in 2016. After all, we were told in 2014 that if we voted No then we would stay in the EU. Who could have guessed that that was a flat out lie?
It wasn’t a lie.
At that time Brexit hadn’t been voted for (and I don’t think the referendum had even been announced).
No statement about the future looks at every conceivable scenario
OK. So circumstances have changed in ways people couldn't even have conceived since 2014, is that what you're saying? I take it you agree that Scotland should have another referendum then in light of this.
Yes, circumstances changed.
And I gave no problem with Scotland having another vote, say in 20 years
Voting again and again until you get the answer you want is undemocratic
Democracy doesn't have a 20 year timespan, it has a 5 year timespan.
Parliament lasts 5 years not 20 years.
2021 is the next scheduled Holyrood elections. That is not "voting again and again" it is a regularly scheduled election.
If the Scots elect a government committed to another referendum that is not "voting again and again" it is democracy in action.
It’s not within the remit of the Scottish government to determine whether there is a referendum
The British could elect a government committed to requiring the French to implement the Treaty of Troyes but that wouldn’t make it a democratic requirement
But we are not going to agree on this so let’s not bother to rehearse the same old arguments
The French are a foreign nation. Are the Scots?
Your "again and again" or "generation" or "20 year" arguments are just fluff. Elections are routinely held every five years for a reason.
Either you respect Scottish democracy or you do not. It is a simple enough question. Do you respect Scottish democracy: yes or no?
Yes.
I also respect the current constitutional set up which explicitly reserves power on referendums to Westminster.
By all means campaign to get that changed. But until it is changed screaming “it’s undemocratic” doesn’t cut it.
It absolutely does cut it.
Scotland has elections. They should be respected.
If you want to say you don't respect Scottish elections then that will doom the union faster than anything else.
If the SNP wanted another referendum without another election in-between getting a mandate for that then that would be asking "again and again" but your notion of "20 years" has no grounding within our constitutional settlement.
No Parliament can bind its successors has been a clear principle of our Parliamentary Democracy for hundreds of years. This Parliament is not bound by a vote nearly a decade ago now when so much has changed inbetween, it either chooses to respect the Scottish electorates choice in 2021 or it does not - there is no hiding place.
Matters related to the Union are explicitly reserved to Westminster. I know the SNP believes that doesn’t include referendums but that is a minority view.
That is the current constitutional settlement. If you don’t like it you need to change it not just set it aside
Absolutely it is reserved to Westminster, and nearly 100% of Scottish Westminster MPs are in favour of another referendum. People are campaigning to change it and are doing so democratically at the ballot box.
Now Scotland has a regularly scheduled election next year. If the SNP win a mandate for a referendum then Westminster has the ability to respect the will of the voters, or the ability to treat voters with contempt.
In my view politicians treating voters with contempt is not smart or productive.
disagreeing with someone is not treating them with contempt. The Scottish voters determined they were part of the U.K. demos. So they should be treated as part of the U.K. demos for reserved matters.
He says any teachers over 50 will be eligible for a vaccine in the first phase, as will those under 50 with underlying health conditions.
Phase two will take into account "a range of other professions and key workers", he says, particularly if they can’t avoid travelling to work or they can’t avoid exposure at work.
He adds that the decision about those vaccinated in phase two “has not been made yet”. He says the rate of delivering the vaccine will determine when phase two is decided.
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If I am lucky I might get my by August.
They just need to get them into as many arms as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Whether you personally have had the vaccine is of little relevance to the success of this.
Comments
https://twitter.com/markdiffley1/status/1344238973783302146?s=20
https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1344232644041732098?s=20
Until we do a Pfizer vs Astra Zeneca trial we won't know "which is better?"
Why not just use the term "British Celts"?
Different starting points, different data sets.
https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1344232649221677056?s=20
https://twitter.com/JamesAALongman/status/1344257253424168960?s=20
NYTimes
The Norway option isn't looking too good either:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/12/29/uks-deal-europe-better-says-norways-leading-party/
It appears safe though, and mostly effective. In the current dire situation it needs to be rolled out despite the efficacy data being substandard.
I think further trials would struggle to recruit, particularly in vulnerable populations. We are probably going to have to depend on post market surveillance.
The US vaccine rollout is much, much better than ours. They've got their priorities right.
https://twitter.com/alanmcn1/status/1344255472254279682?s=20
2:30 vote on deal (obviously one-sided, probably about 500-100)
3pm new Tier announcements
4pm new School announcements
Is that right? Anything else going on?
If Tier 4 will entail school closures then would that be announced at 3pm or 4pm?
In fact, before the arrival of Europeans, the indigenous Native American tribes occupied all of North America.
Similarly, before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the indigenous Brythonic Celtic (or Welsh) tribes occupied almost all of present day England.
Boudicca was culturally a Brythonic Celt, or Welsh.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baugé
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/30/georgia-senate-early-voting-452221
The government have the right priorities. Need to cut hospitalisations fast. Care homes are one of the worst superspreaders in the entire nation and a source of a quarter of all deaths and a vast proportion of hospitalisations.
What the FDA might insist in is irrelevant for the half of the world which might benefit from thus.
And the variable time between jabs appears to have thrown up useful evidence on what might be optimal.
AZN isn’t really a vaccines company, which would go some way to explaining why a set of trials run at unusual speed was a bit if a mess. It’s perhaps a shame that GSK didn’t partner with Imperial rather than (or as well as) Sanofi.
You could come to the same conclusion based on participation in the English Football League, but sadly not the English Premier League despite no want of trying.
This will happen with every vaccine.
Though as genetics shows the level of genetic continuity in East Anglia (as presently defined) goes back to neolithic times, then perhaps it just means that the English are Welsh too.
Personally, I have never been a fan of such lineage tracing. It does rather lead to the idea of newer arrivals being illegitimate in some way in their claims to an equal stake in modern Britain.
But the situation we have is not that. It’s nothing like it. The moral case for another Sindy referendum is that there has been, since 2014, an absolute slam dunk of a “material change in circumstances”. Scotland is being yanked out of the EU against its clear and settled will.
But this is not enough. There must be a democratic case too and this is not yet made. Sure, there are opinion polls, but they are “soft”. The hard democratic mandate for Sindy2 will come, if it does, from an SNP majority at Holyrood won with Sindy2 at the heart of its manifesto and campaign. If that happens, it’s a done deal as regards the argument. Johnson may resist the logic but if he does he will be in a bad place.
Hence the suggestions that it be used as a single shot (despite no longer term data on that).
Ditto Boudicca. She is not an East Anglian. She is Welsh.
(I agree present-day Wales is an Indian reservation).
“One problem already is that different regional NHS authorities of the country seem to be handling this with different timetables.”
Do you have any evidence to support this claim, otherwise can the header be accused as being spin and mischief making?
Certainly around where I am it seems to only getting distributed and people getting it in the posh area’s of the town. And people are saying this, it’s only the posh sods getting it first.
But is this just misconception, rather like “let them eat cake”. I mean, if it relies on regional NHS authorities that is better structurally and less under pressure in wealthier places than in poorer regions, that at least would be a credible reason why the posh sods are getting it first in the main?
And I agree as you say, politically dangerous.
Over 85+ are at over 400 admissions per day
65-84 at 800
1.6 million over 85s - vaccinate them, admissions go down by 25%
10 million 65-84 - vaccinate them as well, admissions go down by 75%
(1) "x% of the population become immune with this vaccine, and can meet infected people all the time and never catch it" or
(2) "everyone has a reduction of x% in the probability of catching the infection on any one occasion exposed to it"?
If (1) were the case, then if x is high (e.g. Pfizer's 95%), we might start behaving normally. In particular, NHS staff who meet infected people all the time might be well-prrotected. If (2) is the case then we still need to socially distance etc. until the spread drops so far that you rarely meet an infected person (because you'll still catch it if you keep meeting them, just "100-x%" of time you would have caught it before).
Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can answer this?
I suspect that whichever way it goes, it would be the last one for a long time. If the SNP lose this one, it would be more like post 1979 than post 2014. If they win, obviously it would be the last.
With just 800K jabs we could have made a real dent in keeping the NHS running over the winter period. We really are in a "48h to save the NHS" situation and we've wasted the vaccine doses we do have.
And as a cultural nation Britain was invented in the 1700s so Blackford is right.
No matter what you do care homes will always be a superspreader event. Social distancing is impossible when dealing with dementia residents - hard to wipe someone's bum or feed someone from two metres away. And if a care home has 150 staff all living in the community and 1% of the community is infected (per ONS) in a week then it is virtually impossible to stop the virus repeatedly re-entering homes.
2016 Labour leadership and front bench do not campaign very hard for Remain. It’s almost like they have always believed in brexit.
2017 Labour stand in GE on slim majority of voters in a flawed direct democracy vote have spoken a brexit means brexit platform.
2019 any chance of a sensible as possible soft brexit slaughtered by Labour. Any chance of a confirmatory vote slaughtered by Labour.
2020 ambitious slimy pole climbing New Labour leadership vote for and ensure hardest of brexit endorsing slimmest of deals.
Conclusion. This is not a Tory Brexit. Labour has the blood of British economy on its hands. As households and government coffers become poorer Labour has that blood on its hands too.
- 75% over 80s
- 20% care home staff
- 5% for NHS staff
for the vaccine....
A referendum going to Yes doesn't end the Union. The Scottish Government will still need to negotiate an exit agreement with Westminster and Westminster will control how that occurs.
If it wasn't reserved then the SNP could have just issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence even without a referendum.
Hopefully from Monday the government will push for 300-500k per day for AZ but they don't seem up to the task and our hospitals are not only going to be overrun, they are also going to be short staffed. It's a double disaster becuaee the government fears bad headlines of young doctors and nurses getting vaccinated while old people are dying of it.
To put this into context, we're arming people back at home while the boys and girls going over the top are expected to fight bare handed. It's going to end badly.
The only patients being prioritised over doctors and nurses are the extremely vulnerable who have been sourcing a quarter of all hospitalisation, an even higher proportion of deaths and are major superspreaders.
Reducing the demand on doctors and nurses by 25% will have an immediate benefit to those doctors and nurses.
Establish/stipulate - both, in a sense. Methodology was both advanced and made the norm.
IIRC it was a reaction if anything to the sloppiness of the old handwaving approximations of missing link, affinities with, ancestor of, sort of statement. It made evolutionists and palaeontologsits much more careful in their assertions, and much more precise, about their hypotheses of relationships. More disprovable. More scientific. Also made them explicitly state their analyses up front. And that of course also leads to attention to the inherent limitations of the analysis. And going beyond them is never a great thing.
(And it applied btw just as much to zoologists working from living animals alone without useful fossils - in fact Hennig the chap who got much of this going was an entomologist IIRC).
A vax effectiveness of 90% means that if I take it my risk of becoming infected is 10% of what it would be if I did not take it. So, for example, if my condition and lifestyle means I have a 50% chance of getting Covid in the next 3 months, if I take the vaccine, all else being equal, my chance of getting it drops to 5%.
And then hopefully the vax does 2 other things for me. It reduces the chance of me getting VERY sick if I do get the virus. And it stops me somehow spreading it despite not having it.
Especially since that quarter of hospitalisations are more likely to get seriously ill, end in ICU and/or die.
Reducing 25% of ambulances call outs and hospitalisations from this will have an immediate impact.
We're asking doctors and nurses to take extraordinary risks, we have vaccine doses available and yet we're giving them to other people. It's morally wrong and it's going to leave us with hospitals and no staff by the middle of January.
If parliament says no, Boris can speak to EU to roll on the transition. It is a discussion and agreement that will only take a couple of minutes. No one in power either side the channel creates no deal when alternatives are possible. Simples.
It’s not panto season with anyone saying “oh no he can’t” because, yes he can. It’s exactly the same as with May’s deal when she said it’s this or nothing, but ended up in that third option to re open the in un-reopenable.
it’s is NOT a binary choice about picking the lesser of two evils in the national interest. Starmer is a liar. He needs to be called out on this.
If parliament doesn’t pass it before the 1st it’s not inevitably no deal brexit. That is a lie. That is a lie by scoundrels. It can be more transition, would EU say no to more transition if parliament reject and government asked for hasty transition extension?
Is there anyone on PB this afternoon claiming it’s this deal or no deal, no other options? Come on speak up and say it. We are up for it. We’ll have you. Deals of this magnitude passing the commons because the clocks run down. Yeah that’s democracy.
There is no way any opposition party can whip this. There is not a single reason any MP of any party should feel there is a gun to their head if they don’t like this deal and don’t want to vote for it.
The Government have an EIGHTY SEAT majority, and it’s government alone who have negotiated it, created the deal. If the only way they can get votes for it is they have run the clock down, that goes completely against the better democracy they claim brexit is all about. It goes against all democracy.
If you tolerate having to vote for this because the clock has run down, burning down the parliament will be next.
I'd include all essential service staff as well.
We won't get to that 25% figure until the end of January at the earliest, probably mid February at the current roll out rate. The NHS is going to collapse in between.
Our response has always been about ensuring a fully functioning NHS. "Fully" has already been degraded by the loss of so much elective surgery. Having 50% of staff down is disastrous for even the remaining Covid response to be addressed.
I would have rolled out the first vaccines to hospitals. Within 48 hours, everybody not self-isolating, done. It is full of people who can administer a. Then those self-isolating - most will be a precautionary non-Covid anyway. By mid-January, we have a largely Covid-protected NHS. Build upwards from there.
Whether you personally have had the vaccine is of little relevance to the success of this.