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Trump’s desperate attempt to bully the Georgia Secretary of State shows the lengths he’ll go to hang
Trump’s desperate attempt to bully the Georgia Secretary of State shows the lengths he’ll go to hang on – politicalbetting.com
The big Trump news overnight has been the above attempt by the President to find a way of hanging on in there. Just listening to it he sounds desperate and there are on 16 days left till Biden’s inauguration.
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The timing for the Georgia run-off is a moment of high drama.
The NHS in the south is close to cracking. The SA variant may be resistant to the vaccines.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jan/04/uk-coronavirus-live-matt-hancock-south-african-covid-variant-lockdown-schools-latest-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Its clear now, quicker than I expected, that vaccines will not set us free.
Indeed, restrictions are not lifting as vaccines roll out, they are intensifying. The spread of the virus cannot be because of anything the government is doing and so it must be our fault.
Maoists blamed 'speculators' when markets crashed or ceased to exist in response to their policies and rounded them up in camps or executed them.
What we have here from Hancock and SAGE is tghe beginning of something in the same vein.
As I posted on here before, we are never getting out of this. We are never getting out until the economy breaks, or we decide we have had enough. Even then we face a gargantuan struggle to get any of our liberties back
https://twitter.com/leonardocarella/status/1346031027387576320?s=20
The Conservative Party doesn't get very bothered by race, creed or religion these days. Look at the make-up of the Cabinet. They have had two women Prime Ministers (ahem, Labour....) Although Conservatives are probably more likely to see Muslim suicide bombers and tar the whole of Islam with the same "they are out to get us" brush. But then, they just share that prejudice with the wider electorate. It's just what happens when some of your adherents blow us up on buses and trains and at pop concerts.
If bird flu ever mutates so as to be easily transmissible without loss of mortality then panic.
The spread of the virus is a function of the average behaviour of the population - go and look out of your front door. How many people maskless and getting within 2m of others?
This may be less palatable than blaming Boris/Cummings/The Illuminati etc but it is hard fact.
In that case, because economies cannot stay shut forever, the virus will - as some foresaw at the start - simply rip through humanity, taking out 3% of people, and damaging more. Health systems adjust by simply refusing to treat many cases. In the end the virus fizzles out as we reach herd immunity through near-universal infection. Or it just becomes something horrible we learn to live with, just as we lived alongside smallpox, for centuries.
https://twitter.com/DailyMail/status/1346029886696267777?s=20
Some people just want the vaccines to fail to justify their previous position that millions will die no matter what approach was taken.
What frightens me is the power of the state and the unaccountable SAGE committee. A committee that is determined to hold on to the vast unaccountable influence it has, whatever happens with the virus.
"The advantage is that you don't need a second injection, it's just automatically upgraded"
The party civil war that breaks out on January 21st will only be finished when the far right is vanquished. Once Trump has gone and his legal jeopardy catches up with him, it will be very hard indeed to support anything he was associated with.
Going to be the biggest settling of scores in quite a while. Cruz et al will be defeated and the drang nach recht of the GOP will finally be halted.
"Waiter, I am very sorry. I asked for extra ice for my G&T, but this is simply ridiculous."
And the Survivalists will continue to survive...
Learning to live with coronaviruses really means "learning to accept the rules" rather than "learning to find loopholes in the rules to personal advantage" and that is a massive cultural change for us.
It will also require a confident, authoritative, widely respected government, and we don't have one of those.
Actually, they are never going to win with any candidate. America is hurtling to the left.
You lot still have prolapses if any criticism is made of the bloke that thought ‘keep England white’ was a goer as an election slogan.
The problem is the sick and the pressure on the NHS. I think that within 10 days we are going to see significant parts of the country where it is simply not possible to get into a hospital and people will die of heart attacks and strokes that could have been saved. I really don't see how we can stop this now even if we shut the schools and enter total lockdown. Its already baked in.
This risks spreading the consequences of the virus somewhat but again I do not think enough people of working age will be directly affected to impact on society. So I don't agree its the greatest threat to humanity since WW2. But its bad and getting worse, no question.
The Economic, Social and Environmental Council (Cese) announces this Sunday, January 3 in the Journal du Dimanche and to Franceinfo that the drawing of lots for the 35 members of the future "collective of citizens" responsible for deciding on the French vaccine strategy against the coronavirus will begin this Monday. The panel formed will respect criteria of age, gender, region of residence, level of qualification, socio-professional category and type of residence.
In Le Parisien , Gabriel Attal, the government spokesperson, explained that this group of around thirty "citizens drawn by lot, representing all the territories, will be formed on January 10" . Their work will begin on January 16. The government spokesperson assures us that they "will be able to ask all the questions, make all the observations and question Olivier Véran or Professor Alain Fisher" on the management of the Covid-19 epidemic and vaccination. This citizen collective was first mentioned by Emmanuel Macron on November 24 in a speech.
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/sante-sciences/coronavirus-35-francais-tires-au-sort-des-demain-pour-se-prononcer-sur-la-strategie-vaccinale-1609692378
I know they've got a problem with vaccine acceptance in France - and in the meantime they are vaccinating Care Home residents & front line medical workers....
In University news, UCL has announced that students should not return to campus (unless already there, or doing special subjects) until at least the end of Feb. I hear that Cambridge may be doing something similar. Let's hope that some other Universities grow a backbone and do the same. Mine still silent.
--AS
Because it's becoming more plausible by the day.
At an uneducated glance, hospitalisations per day need to be below 1500 to have any chance of stabilising the raw numbers in hospital (looking at the hospitalisations per day on the dashboard and ooking across to ttal numbers in hospital).
They're currently in excess of 3000 per day, and climbing.
We know that in practice, when the overload comes, hospitals will triage by age. We're hoping that the oldest will be not as present in the stats already via vaccination, but if overload happens now, it's still too soon for significant effects.
If it happens in two weeks, the over 85s might be largely protected already. In four to six weeks, half the over 75s might be, as well. Beyond that, the effects will hopefully kick in at an accelerating rate; we're in a race.
If hopsitals can only cope with half the daily intake, and that's focused on younger ages, the over-75s are on their own. About 1500 per day. Most of these possibly dying.
If only a third (ie hospitalisations over 4500 per day), the over-65s are on their own. That's 3,000 per day not being helped when they need it.
If they get above that, all bets are off. With increasing spread, I could see it getting down to the over 45s being abandoned, but that would be the worst plausible case, I think. We'd be looking at over 10,000 per day needing hospitalisation, reflecting case numbers consistently over 100,000 per day. With over 8,000 of those that would otherwise be hospitalised not being helped.
January death toll could therefore be anything between 20,000 (if hospitals manage to keep treating everyone, which seems increasingly more challenging) to over 100,000 in that month alone, but I want to believe that last case is highly unlikely. The numbers should, though, reduce startlingly quickly as vaccination takes effect.
It truly is very much a race.
His message is 'we will always need lockdowns'. There will never be life without the threat of lockdown. Even with vaccines. Ever.
What would it be if all those who were hospitalised were sent home without any support instead?
Is that because Scots are racists - or because no other ethnicities want to go there?
Cui bono, why would anyone want to keep people locked down and paid furlough?
"Citizens of London" by Lynne Olson
Read it and weep.
Lets face it Andy, if SAGE told you to jump off cliff to stop the spread of the virus, you probably would.
Why isn't Shagger bringing back one of his greatest hits?
https://twitter.com/JoshuaRozenberg/status/1346038411124211712?s=20
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Of course in reality it must be less than that, because of undetected infections etc, but we cannot know the true figure. And, as you rightly say, the real nightmare is crashed health systems, in which case the CFR will shoot up as many bad cases go untreated, and other ailments are ignored, can’t reach hospital, and so forth
Someone here reported from the US the other day that in their State paramedics were already being told not to bring to hospital those they couldn't revive on site, instead they are now declared dead rather than being hospitalised (where the hospital often can revive people).
Or have you moved on to 'economic collapse will set us free?'
They have loads of political cover in terms of Cockey Covid and now SA Covid, to brush off claims of but but but you said no new national lockdown ever. And also the polling shows repeatedly that the majority of the public urge on the side of caution when it comes to further restrictions.
Your continuing depths to which you'll take your delusion to avoid coming to terms with reality continue to push new boundaries.
Hell, I remember discussing the economic case with you; you were stone cold certain that all economists must be against lockdown and were shocked to find the opposite was the case. Since then, you swiftly forgot all about that and I guess if you do think of it at all, must have concluded that they're part of that vast international conspiracy.
Ramping up restrictions after that is not a good look.
"Look, the nasty SNP did it to us!"
But the tragedy of being a grown-up is sometimes having to do things you fundamentally dislike.
Even if the strain evolves then a vaccine should still provide some significant cross immunity protection.
The idea anyone wants us locked down forever is just bonkers.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaRozenberg/status/1346039907039535104?s=20
Much easier than the original lockdown decision.
Repeat ad infinitum...
Hopefully the vaccines work. I believe they will. But if they don’t we might have to be very brutal in our choices to save our health system.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/367842/scotland-ethnicity-of-population/#:~:text=Scotland: ethnic breakdown 2018&text=96 percent of the population,was Asians with 2.6 percent.
Them's the right stats.
Now - back to Scotlaand: racist, or just a wasteland no-one else wants to live in?
Boris is going to have to do a u-turn or whatever you want to call it, and lock down immediately. What other option is there?
If it gets much worse getting vaccinated is going to be a very risky operation.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaRozenberg/status/1346041756513660928?s=20
"DJ" = District Judge Vanessa Baraitser
You might as well say that it is wrong for the government to say that we drive on the left hand side of the road.
There's still much debate hereabouts whether on HMS Bedford and the the deck cricket match, Capt Aubrey Symth-Roberts (Scots Guards) was caught in the English Channel at mid wicket off the bowling of Sgt Peter Wright (Somerset Light Infantry). At the time the Umpire Lt Ian Featherstone-Haigh (RN) was being diverted by a German Stuka, who was subsequently escorted from the ground by Sqn Ldr "Bonzo" Bertie White (RAF Biggin Hill).
The match was deemed a draw when the sides docked and departed for tea courtesy of the NAAFI mobile refreshments van.
Happy days!!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-55526450