Analysis: 'Closing schools the only level left to pull' - Hannah Richardson, BBC News education and social affairs reporter
Raises hand slowly......the border?.....places of worship?....
Are there still flights in from SA? I dont know. But if there are and the SA variant takes off and the vaccine doesn't work as well then Johnson just has to resign. End of. The final piece of inane clownery.
No, flights from SA were grounded when the announcement was made . . . to much moaning in the media of the sudden grounding. 🙄
There's a Virgin Atlantic flight due to arrive at Heathrow from Johannesburg at 07:15 tomorrow morning.
It could be one of those ghost flights that airlines run to avoid compensation payouts. Also UK residents are still allowed to come back.
Will they be tested or quarantined on arrival? My bet is that they won't.
Halfon (Chair of Ed Select Ctte) saying ministers were churning out messages to MPs over the weekend insisting that schools were safe and would definitely be opening.
He says he doesn't know what happened and that it is "a huge shambles". Asked whether Williamson is to blame, he says "I think it is the entire government".
I rather get the impression that Haflon's somewhat cross about being left out of the Government. Rather like Hunt.
Being told that Williamson was better qualified than you are...how would you take it?
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Sturgeon has to be preemptive, what with Scotland being less resilient and that.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Is that actually what happened or are you just guessing?
They had a call yesterday morning. "Nicola" then held hers early afternoon before Boris at 8pm.
A meme then started doing the rounds on WhatsApp of Boris 'copying' Nicola's homework in the style of Mr. Bean.
She does it. Because it works.
The emergency session for the announcement was called on the Sunday, AIUI, while the clown and Gavlar were still going round insisting that English primary schools would be opening. Indeed the Scottish announcement was made whilst English primary school children were running round infecting each other in the playground.
Scots had already been warned to expect online teaching in January until at least 18 January - and that warning was back in 21 December. (There were esceptions for vulnerable and key worker children, though.)
My son's school has something like 120 pupils expected in tomorrow. Its mainly doctors who can afford the fees these days.
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Defcon works in reverse, the lower the number the higher the alert level.
The lost income from student rents may actually be less than lost income from summer schools and conferences, which will probably not fully rebound after COVID. This may end up being the more significant problem. --AS
Yes, quite likely. This is an area that has changed in recent years, where academic conferences used to be charged more or less at cost by a host university, but it's now common to get private companies (sometimes university owned, sometimes not) to run the conference with much inflated costs. Nice earner for universities (an other hosts) and doesn't bother the university customers too much as the inflated costs are now factored into funding proposals. However, stop the conferences and a black hole develops that wouldn't have occurred years ago when conferences were run close to cost. Another area where commercialisation of universities has increased their incomes but now leaves them more exposed than before to events like the present.
Of course, many are trying to run online courses/conferences at the same fee and there will be some success there. Grants normally require funds to be spent during grant duration and any unspent funds go back to the funder, so there's an incentive for people like me to pay over the odds for an online course or conference with reduced benefit rather than just give the money back for no benefit.
Does mean academics like me are not getting our normal ell expenses paid foreign holidays... er... conferences
On a more serious note, my current grant includes funding to begin/grow a collaboration with colleagues in Canada. This is depended on travel as the legal framework for accessing data is such that we can only access their data within Canada and they can only access ours within UK. We don't yet know whether we'll be able to defer the funding for travel assuming it cannot happen this year (grant ends this year) but if not then we'll need to build it into a future proposal or it won't happen. The idea is that we can share our methods in each other's data. We can share code remotely and explain methods, but it's much more effective if you can actually see the data and apply/demonstrate your methods directly, which we simple cannot legally do without travel.
The sensible thing of course will be to extend the deadline for spending the grant money, but no idea yet whether that will be permitted.
Sorry to hear that. Funding bodies are not known for their flexibility.
My own international collaborations are withering, not for any reason as serious as yours but simply because they relied on in-person "brainstorming" which doesn't work online. I think there's likely to be a move to permanently reduce international academic travel (because of the environment, but also cost) and some in charge simply don't understand this sort of thing. For all that we joke about all-expenses-paid holiday/conferences, my international collaborations happened because of dinners after the sessions: building trust, setting up informal information flows, and having time to discuss wacky ideas without the pressure of a result. A return to locality-focused silos would be a backward step, but... well, it is what it is.
--AS
I apologise in advance for the unsolicited advice however I've personally found that "brainstorming" remotely works much better by phone rather than by "Zoom". In 99% of scenarios you don't need to actually see the person and conversation flows much better on a phone call rather than on a video call with a dodgy connection.
You are right though that the best collaboration happens in person. That's something I've really struggled with as a student, as someone who learns and works best by bouncing ideas around off people.
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Because it fits into the preconception/excuse/straw to grasp at that the SG is as shite as the UK/England one.
I've noticed very little comment by the PBTories about the much lower hospitalization rate per 100K in Scotland in recent months, and the fact that the SG has called its lockdown at a much lower level than did the other three home nations, but did so when the numbers started going up sharply. Whether this is going to be sufficient is another matter, of course, but it does offer a counterexample of how things might have been done.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Great bantz, apart from Sturgeon announcing the day before that there'd be a statement at Holyrood.
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Because it fits into the preconception/excuse/straw to grasp at that the SG is as shite as the UK/England one.
I've noticed very little comment by the PBTories about the much lower hospitalization rate per 100K in Scotland in recent months, and the fact that the SG has called its lockdown at a much lower level than did the other three home nations, but did so when the numbers started going up sharply. Whether this is going to be sufficient is another matter, of course, but it does offer a counterexample of how things might have been done.
I'd wait until seeing the back dated hospital figures that will be released today before drawing too many conclusions.
This is a make or break day for how fucked Scotland is after 5 days of flying blind
Never mind exams R4. Press Gove on the vaccine delivery. Where is the detailed plan? Demonstrate Johnson is not going to f*ck this up.
I still think that there are much more likely to be problems and delays on the supply side than the delivery side. When we have more than 1m people working for the NHS delivering 2m vaccines a week really shouldn't be that hard. In 19/20 we managed to provide 15.3m flu vaccines in a similar sort of time to that indicated by Boris yesterday for a similar sort of number. I suspect that this year we did even more but I am struggling to find the numbers.
My wife and I had the jab for the first time in many years (possibly ever in her case) this year at our GP surgery. The possibility of combining Covid and flu seemed not a sensible risk to take. I think looked at from that perspective the targets for vaccine delivery seem pretty modest and will, I think, be driven by the supply side.
Have there been any hard stats on flu 2020-21? Anecdotally I see a lot of people saying they & theirs have managed to avoid colds and flu this winter, if verifiable an indication that lockdowns work (& take pressure of the NHS that is dealing with u-kno-what).
Not that I have seen but it stands to reason that the precautions taken against Covid should reduce the incidence of flu as well, masks especially.
There are hard stats for flu *vaccines* delivered by Pharmacies here, which with GP ones will have an effect on occurrence. They are significantly up on last year.
When I looked at these before it was significantly up by about 50% over the same time point last year. But they are delivering to extra eligibility groups I think (eg normal 50-64s), which is noise for comparisons.
And I am not sure of the scope - perhaps England and Wales?
Halfon (Chair of Ed Select Ctte) saying ministers were churning out messages to MPs over the weekend insisting that schools were safe and would definitely be opening.
He says he doesn't know what happened and that it is "a huge shambles". Asked whether Williamson is to blame, he says "I think it is the entire government".
I rather get the impression that Haflon's somewhat cross about being left out of the Government. Rather like Hunt.
Being told that Williamson was better qualified than you are...how would you take it?
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Sturgeon has to be preemptive, what with Scotland being less resilient and that.
You inference is quite pathetic and so typically nationalistic and divisive. You hope that from your sarcastic statement people will assume Scotland is in some way exceptional, and that by extension Scots are better than elsewhere. They are no better no worse.
Sturgeon, however, is a better politician than Bozo (not necessarily a compliment), but in terms of their pathetic desire to cause division they are peas in the pod along with Donald Trump. I just wish all you nationalists would grow up
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Defcon works in reverse, the lower the number the higher the alert level.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Maybe New Zealand is just a very different country in a much different geographical position?
Well, as an island it obviously has advantages that the Great Britain could never have.
Does a bridge/tunnel mean that an island stops being an island? That's not to say that I think we shouldn't have done a whole lot better, but I think NZ is a little different to GB.
One of the mysteries of the pandemic is why some countries have done so much better than others in keeping it under control despite an absence of natural advantages. OK, so NZ is an Island but no more so than other islands that have not done so well. Why have Vietnam and Norway been so good. How does Canada manage to be so much better than the USA, with which it shares a 5,000 mile border?
One is tempted to conclude it might have something to do with how smart their governments have been, but maybe that's simplistic.
I'm pretty sure it's just that to be honest. At the beginning there was a lot of luck involved for sure. Bergamo could have been Birmingham or Bilbao probably.
But now - the virus is basically everywhere - and what matters is how well our systems manage to isolate the infected from the rest.
Having an ageing population + more people with pre-existing conditions means you are going to get more deaths/case. But some countries have done public health much better than others. Europe/US generally has failed I think, with the UK squandering some particular advantages that should have helped us.
yeah, a bit of luck at the start - although UK was seeded more widely than Italy which saw the North ravaged but the South broadly untouched. Eastern Europe locked down when the numbers of cases there was minimal.
Geography surely plays a big part - dense cities vs spread out communities. A mini-example would be my area in a big city - its mostly 1 or 2 bedroom flats and feels like a village, so its always had a lower rate that the surrounding MSOAs. If people get it, they isolate, arrange deliveries and each infection is, broadly, a dead end. We had something silly like 6 cases in total until September.
Then demographics - older, fatter populations will do worse at the hospitalisation and death stage.
And then, finally, political decisions may count for a small effect on top of that. Perceptions and confirmation bias mostly.
We have put a lot of import in numbers a few months into a situation that may take 24 months to play out. At least within Europe we can see a lot of countries that were broadly fine in the Spring being hammered now.
Never mind exams R4. Press Gove on the vaccine delivery. Where is the detailed plan? Demonstrate Johnson is not going to f*ck this up.
I still think that there are much more likely to be problems and delays on the supply side than the delivery side. When we have more than 1m people working for the NHS delivering 2m vaccines a week really shouldn't be that hard. In 19/20 we managed to provide 15.3m flu vaccines in a similar sort of time to that indicated by Boris yesterday for a similar sort of number. I suspect that this year we did even more but I am struggling to find the numbers.
My wife and I had the jab for the first time in many years (possibly ever in her case) this year at our GP surgery. The possibility of combining Covid and flu seemed not a sensible risk to take. I think looked at from that perspective the targets for vaccine delivery seem pretty modest and will, I think, be driven by the supply side.
Have there been any hard stats on flu 2020-21? Anecdotally I see a lot of people saying they & theirs have managed to avoid colds and flu this winter, if verifiable an indication that lockdowns work (& take pressure of the NHS that is dealing with u-kno-what).
Not that I have seen but it stands to reason that the precautions taken against Covid should reduce the incidence of flu as well, masks especially.
There are hard stats for flu *vaccines* delivered by Pharmacies here, which with GP ones will have an effect on occurrence. They are significantly up on last year.
When I looked at these before it was significantly up by about 50% over the same time point last year. But they are delivering to extra eligibility groups I think (eg normal 50-64s), which is noise for comparisons.
And I am not sure of the scope - perhaps England and Wales?
What I think is tolerably clear is that the current structures for the flu jab on their own could deliver 14m Covid injections by mid February, let alone the additional resource that is being thrown at it. The problem is the supply where the government has done what they can but problems are inevitable.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Is that actually what happened or are you just guessing?
They had a call yesterday morning. "Nicola" then held hers early afternoon before Boris at 8pm.
A meme then started doing the rounds on WhatsApp of Boris 'copying' Nicola's homework in the style of Mr. Bean.
She does it. Because it works.
Before you know it she'll be writing nonsense on redyellow buses.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Is that actually what happened or are you just guessing?
They had a call yesterday morning. "Nicola" then held hers early afternoon before Boris at 8pm.
A meme then started doing the rounds on WhatsApp of Boris 'copying' Nicola's homework in the style of Mr. Bean.
She does it. Because it works.
Before you know it she'll be writing nonsense on redyellow buses.
Quite true:
Nippy and her terrible record of delivery. Stop Brexit my arse.....
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
More likely it was Boris : dither fiddle blather maybe maybe not, ..... Nicola : F*** you Boris I am going ahead you great wobbling cowardly bag of merde
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Sturgeon has to be preemptive, what with Scotland being less resilient and that.
You inference is quite pathetic and so typically nationalistic and divisive. You hope that from your sarcastic statement people will assume Scotland is in some way exceptional, and that by extension Scots are better than elsewhere. They are no better no worse.
Sturgeon, however, is a better politician than Bozo (not necessarily a compliment), but in terms of their pathetic desire to cause division they are peas in the pod along with Donald Trump. I just wish all you nationalists would grow up
You're a ****ing idiot. I have no problem being divided from ****ing idiots.
'Boris Johnson takes BRUTAL swipe at Sturgeon’s NHS in emergency coronavirus announcement
BORIS JOHNSON couldn't resist hitting out at Nicola Sturgeon's plans to tackle the coronavirus in Scotland, as he emphasised "issues" of "resilience" for her health service. It came after the Scottish First Minister earlier appeared to announce plans from the important COBRA meeting before Mr Johnson had a chance to speak to the media.'
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Defcon works in reverse, the lower the number the higher the alert level.
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Sturgeon has to be preemptive, what with Scotland being less resilient and that.
You inference is quite pathetic and so typically nationalistic and divisive. You hope that from your sarcastic statement people will assume Scotland is in some way exceptional, and that by extension Scots are better than elsewhere. They are no better no worse.
Sturgeon, however, is a better politician than Bozo (not necessarily a compliment), but in terms of their pathetic desire to cause division they are peas in the pod along with Donald Trump. I just wish all you nationalists would grow up
It was the Britnats and Brexiters who started bringing in the Scottish Gmt ion an attempt to deflect from Mr Johnson's performance. Not us.
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Because it fits into the preconception/excuse/straw to grasp at that the SG is as shite as the UK/England one.
I've noticed very little comment by the PBTories about the much lower hospitalization rate per 100K in Scotland in recent months, and the fact that the SG has called its lockdown at a much lower level than did the other three home nations, but did so when the numbers started going up sharply. Whether this is going to be sufficient is another matter, of course, but it does offer a counterexample of how things might have been done.
I'd wait until seeing the back dated hospital figures that will be released today before drawing too many conclusions.
This is a make or break day for how fucked Scotland is after 5 days of flying blind
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Is that actually what happened or are you just guessing?
They had a call yesterday morning. "Nicola" then held hers early afternoon before Boris at 8pm.
A meme then started doing the rounds on WhatsApp of Boris 'copying' Nicola's homework in the style of Mr. Bean.
She does it. Because it works.
I don't think that's fair.
1. Sturgeon had planned ahead by delaying the start of term, so that she would have time to decide after New Year whether schools could reopen or not. This avoided the farce of urging parents to send their children to school for one day before telling them to stay at home.
2. Sturgeon had announced that she would be having a Cabinet meeting and making a statement on Sunday - before receiving a phone call from Johnson, and while the UK government position was still to keep schools opened. It's likely she had already decided at that point what most of the country had realised - that the spread of the variant cannot currently be controlled with open schools.
By thinking ahead, and being less resistant to reality, Sturgeon was able to avoid the farce of the one day reopening of schools. Johnson makes it so easy for her to look good in comparison.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Is that actually what happened or are you just guessing?
you are joking , as if Bozo would deign to speak to Nicola, he gets his creature Govid 20 to send the letters
The predictable scramble for vaccines as they become available puts India at the front of queue.
The Indian Government will stockpile the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine until March as part of a nationwide vaccination drive, delaying its wider distribution to the developing world.
The Serum Institute of India (SII), which has gained a licence to produce at least one billion doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, was granted emergency use authorisation by the Indian Government on Sunday on the condition that it doesn’t export the shots.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The Tesco Christmas ad including the guy with a loo roll Snowman "I may have bought too many loo rolls" was absolutely fitting!
Very effective but what is it? A political ad and if so financed by whom? It's about the only rule governing US political ads so I imagine it's just someone on the internet having fun.
I suspect the motive is covering a more sinister angle. Should Trump mobilise the troops to stay in office after 20th January, you can bet your boots that Rubio, Cruz, Graham, Conway etc., will be full square behind Trump. I think that might be the point.
LOL.
Ain't going to happen.
I see the PB Fantasists are luxuriating in utter garbage Trumpist wet dreams again on here.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Is that actually what happened or are you just guessing?
They had a call yesterday morning. "Nicola" then held hers early afternoon before Boris at 8pm.
A meme then started doing the rounds on WhatsApp of Boris 'copying' Nicola's homework in the style of Mr. Bean.
She does it. Because it works.
Before you know it she'll be writing nonsense on redyellow buses.
Quite true:
Nippy and her terrible record of delivery. Stop Brexit my arse.....
Although Brexit has now stopped, no? In the sense that Brexit is now done
The predictable scramble for vaccines as they become available puts India at the front of queue.
The Indian Government will stockpile the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine until March as part of a nationwide vaccination drive, delaying its wider distribution to the developing world.
The Serum Institute of India (SII), which has gained a licence to produce at least one billion doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, was granted emergency use authorisation by the Indian Government on Sunday on the condition that it doesn’t export the shots.
So much for not needing manufacturing in UK, time to revoke their licence
That's for use in India and the developing world not the UK. Why should it bother us if they use it there first then do the developing world? Its not like they're refusing to export to us or we were relying upon it.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The Tesco Christmas ad including the guy with a loo roll Snowman "I may have bought too many loo rolls" was absolutely fitting!
The bog roll hoarding, a very strange and illogical phenomenon seen across many western countries...
Boris and Nicola have a call: "Nicola, I will make a UK-wide announcement at 8pm tonight on a full national lockdown, and the vaccine strategy. We will beat this."
Nicola: "Good. It's the right thing to do. Goodbye"
Nicola to her aides: "QUICK! Schedule my announcement at 2pm today!!"
Great bantz, apart from Sturgeon announcing the day before that there'd be a statement at Holyrood.
And you know, schools being shut in December.
I do have to pose the question: As the notion that Sturgeon acted at speed to spike the Johnson announcement is patently and demonstrably false, what is the purpose is putting out suggestions that this happened?
It won't persuade people of anything other that the desperation of government parrots.
When the history of covid comes to be written I don't think teachers will be among the lists of heroes. While the police the medical professions the fire departments and the shop keepers are keeping the country going all I see of teachers are those saying they wont do anything however well protected the school is because it might not be safe.
With all due respect, Roger, that's crap. My wife spent the whole of last term in front of a class of 28 kids in a small classroom, with no PPE (not allowed in primary schools). Who are these teachers who have been saying they "won't do anything however well protected the school is" ? Please provide a few links to back up your assertion.
The recent data on levels of infection in school children, and that showing that they pass it on at significant rates to their families, along with the data of increased infectivity of the new strain made these school closures inevitable.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Edit: Of course once a patient, in for whatever, test +, then they will have to be handled differently not matter what they are being treated for presumably??
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Good times for the LibDems though. Politics used to be a long game.
HYUFD. As a matter of interest who would you prefer to win?
I have said I would have voted Biden for President but Republican for Congress in November, so I would stick to that and vote for Perdue and Loeffler to ensure no major shift left in the US if I were voting
You'd vote for Perdue knowing he is a crook?
What a surprise.
... and there would be no major shift left. The Senate would still only be 50:50 if the Dems win both Georgia seats and there are moderate Democrats e.g Jon Tester to keep the dangerous lefty Joe Biden in check.
Sturgeon closed schools weeks ago. Boris closed them yesterday. How on earth can you try and concoct the notion that Sturgeon is front running Johnson by a couple of hours?
Because it fits into the preconception/excuse/straw to grasp at that the SG is as shite as the UK/England one.
I've noticed very little comment by the PBTories about the much lower hospitalization rate per 100K in Scotland in recent months, and the fact that the SG has called its lockdown at a much lower level than did the other three home nations, but did so when the numbers started going up sharply. Whether this is going to be sufficient is another matter, of course, but it does offer a counterexample of how things might have been done.
I'd wait until seeing the back dated hospital figures that will be released today before drawing too many conclusions.
This is a make or break day for how fucked Scotland is after 5 days of flying blind
Any idea why they stopped reporting for so long? Timing a tad inopportune.
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Yes the vaccines are the way out, but they are not magic. They will have an effect on the R rate, and they will have an effect on the hospitalization rate, but there won't be an early set-everyone-free moment. The easing of restrictions will still have to be carefully managed to keep cases and resulting hospitalizations within health system capacity.
There's also again the argument to be had of whether we use the help by the vaccines to just try to keep within health system capacity, or whether we try to drive the virus to near zero so that test&trace and localized restrictions can deal with any outbreaks.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
This was my argument last week as to why abstain or oppose should have been the Labour postion. Starmer/ Labour now own bad Brexit.
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Lockdown and vaccine, both together, as hard as possible and as quick as possible is our only hope. Even then, it's touch and go whether we avoid meltdown. Parts of England are already on the brink.
If hard lockdown can just about stabilise cases (there is some evidence for this in South Wales and Essex), vaccination can allow us to ease off gently over time. Bear in mind we need to get hospitalisation rates down, not just the fatality rates and this means vaccinating more than just the most vulnerable population.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
This was my argument last week as to why abstain or oppose should have been the Labour postion. Starmer/ Labour now own bad Brexit.
They don't own it, but they have surrendered some of the right to point out its faults. I agree with you they should have abstained.
yeah, a bit of luck at the start - although UK was seeded more widely than Italy which saw the North ravaged but the South broadly untouched. Eastern Europe locked down when the numbers of cases there was minimal.
Geography surely plays a big part - dense cities vs spread out communities. A mini-example would be my area in a big city - its mostly 1 or 2 bedroom flats and feels like a village, so its always had a lower rate that the surrounding MSOAs. If people get it, they isolate, arrange deliveries and each infection is, broadly, a dead end. We had something silly like 6 cases in total until September.
Then demographics - older, fatter populations will do worse at the hospitalisation and death stage.
And then, finally, political decisions may count for a small effect on top of that. Perceptions and confirmation bias mostly.
We have put a lot of import in numbers a few months into a situation that may take 24 months to play out. At least within Europe we can see a lot of countries that were broadly fine in the Spring being hammered now.
Personally I don't really buy this population density argument - I think it's a negligible factor that is easily counteracted by good policy. All countries have cities - yet many have kept cases extremely low. The reason Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Beijing have a microscopic number of deaths vs. London is policy response.
Never mind exams R4. Press Gove on the vaccine delivery. Where is the detailed plan? Demonstrate Johnson is not going to f*ck this up.
I still think that there are much more likely to be problems and delays on the supply side than the delivery side. When we have more than 1m people working for the NHS delivering 2m vaccines a week really shouldn't be that hard. In 19/20 we managed to provide 15.3m flu vaccines in a similar sort of time to that indicated by Boris yesterday for a similar sort of number. I suspect that this year we did even more but I am struggling to find the numbers.
My wife and I had the jab for the first time in many years (possibly ever in her case) this year at our GP surgery. The possibility of combining Covid and flu seemed not a sensible risk to take. I think looked at from that perspective the targets for vaccine delivery seem pretty modest and will, I think, be driven by the supply side.
Have there been any hard stats on flu 2020-21? Anecdotally I see a lot of people saying they & theirs have managed to avoid colds and flu this winter, if verifiable an indication that lockdowns work (& take pressure of the NHS that is dealing with u-kno-what).
Not that I have seen but it stands to reason that the precautions taken against Covid should reduce the incidence of flu as well, masks especially.
Reported weekly along with the coronavirus testing figures - and remain very low. This is the latest (the previous couple of weeks weren't greatly different):
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/948638/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w53.pdf ...In week 52 2020, out of the 87,561 respiratory specimens reported through the Respiratory DataMart System (based on data received from 14 out of 16 laboratories), 6680 samples were positive for SARS-CoV-2 with an overall positivity of 7.6%. The highest positivity was noted in the 65+ year olds at 8.6% in week 52. The overall influenza positivity remained very low at 0.1% in week 52, with 1 of 1075 samples testing positive for flu (1 influenza A not subtyped) (Figure 12). Rhinovirus positivity increased slightly at 7.6% in week 52 compared to 11.0% in the previous week (Figure 13). The highest positivity by age group for rhinovirus remained in the under 5 year olds in week 52 (Figure 14). Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, parainfluenza and human metapneumovirus (hMPV) positivity all remained low at 0.1%, 1.3%, 0.1% and 0.0% respectively in week 52 (Figure 13)....
Rhinovirus seems to be pretty persistent - something noted all year in Australia too, where coronavirus infections remain extremely low.
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
Our fridge/freezer died during the panic run when the shelves were at their most empty. We hadn't panic-bought anything just shopped as normal but suddenly all our fresh and frozen produce was spoilt and we had what was in the cupboards only.
We survived just fine off the cupboards until our new fridge/freezer was delivered. I then went to the shops and bought what I could, there was no fresh chicken or other products we'd normally have in, but there was enough to get to keep everyone happy even if we altered our diet for a few days.
All in all left with the distinct impression there really was no reason to panic. Even though we lost all our fresh produce at the very worst possible moment nobody went hungry - like I suspect most families there's enough beans, soup and other random stuff accumulated in tins in the cupboard to live off even without anything fresh for a while.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Good times for the LibDems though. Politics used to be a long game.
A very, very, very long game on the back of the last couple of polls, LDs down to almost MoE percentage points. Who are these LD to Conservative switchers?
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Defcon works in reverse, the lower the number the higher the alert level.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Good times for the LibDems though. Politics used to be a long game.
A very, very, very long game on the back of the last couple of polls, LDs down to almost MoE percentage points. Who are these LD to Conservative switchers?
Bath, St Albans, Abingdon and North Oxford and Richmond Park would be Tory gains from the LDs on the new poll according to Baxter, so mainly wealthy Remainers worried about No Deal who went LD but now returning to the Tories after the Brexit Deal has been done
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
Peston asks something dumb 1/100 Journalist asks a penetrating question about the border 100/1
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
One I had looked at increased in price by at least a factor of 3 in about 2 weeks.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
One I had looked at increased in price by at least a factor of 3 in about 2 weeks.
Anybody Baxtered that on new boundaries? Comfy Tory majority I assume?
The lib dems really are a zombie party. Until they can work out a way to get back to 20+ seats they will remain so.
I hope they can do it. The problem with zombies is contrary to what most fiction tells us, they are pretty easy to stop or keep at their current level (hence why most such fiction starts after the event). So they have a tough problem.
The figures can easily be manipulated, although personally I thought yesterday's pledge was one of Johnson's more doable boasts. Nonetheless, is it still wise to be throwing out pledges when few of the previous pledges appear to have been delivered? That said, a failed Johnson promise doesn't seem to do him any harm. Failure is covered by the next bigger and better ambition.
Anyway the fanbois on here are happy with their hero, so all is good!
They really have never heard of the phrase underpromise and over deliver. If they just took the RyanAir acheduking approach and had said our target is mid March for these groups, that will be faster than anywhere else in Europe, most people would have gone hmmm ok...then if they get it done by start of March, they get to claim victory.
Instead, what will happen is some production delays and slower than forecast rate of jabbing and before we know it the timeline has slipped to start of March, without really AZN, the government or the NHS really doing anything massively wrong....but theh will be bashed from pillar to post.
Assuming the lockdown will actually contain the current outbreak, I think we're still due one more round of opening up too quickly and reintroducing restrictions too slowly, because any fall in cases will be ascribed to the vaccines even though it is still primarily our behaviour that controls the R rate. Unrestricted R seems well above 3, and even 50% vaccinated with a 70% efficacy only brings it down by a third. And the partial protection also still leaves plenty of people to potentially get seriously ill.
I think that its very unlikely that even Defcom 5 (you sure about this? Ed) is going to stop the spread of the new variant. At best we are likely to see a levelling off of cases at a very high level until the vaccines start to have an effect. We simply cannot operate, feed ourselves, look after our sick, care for our relatives, etc without a sufficient level of interaction for this new variant to spread. The vaccine is the only hope.
Lockdown and vaccine, both together, as hard as possible and as quick as possible is our only hope. Even then, it's touch and go whether we avoid meltdown. Parts of England are already on the brink.
If hard lockdown can just about stabilise cases (there is some evidence for this in South Wales and Essex), vaccination can allow us to ease off gently over time. Bear in mind we need to get hospitalisation rates down, not just the fatality rates and this means vaccinating more than just the most vulnerable population.
Whilst that is true the most vulnerable are also the most likely to require medical treatment so vaccinating the 20% most at risk should have a significant effect on hospitalisation rates too.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
One I had looked at increased in price by at least a factor of 3 in about 2 weeks.
Luckily our replacement one was unchanged* in price and that was during the panic buying.
* I think. We hadn't looked for a new one in about a decade so couldn't say for certain, but it was pretty much exactly what I would have expected it to cost. In line with inflation on the old model we'd bought a decade earlier.
Though I wonder if chest freezers were more popular than fridge/freezers.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Good times for the LibDems though. Politics used to be a long game.
A very, very, very long game on the back of the last couple of polls, LDs down to almost MoE percentage points. Who are these LD to Conservative switchers?
Bath, St Albans, Abingdon and North Oxford and Richmond Park would be Tory gains from the LDs on the new poll according to Baxter, so mainly wealthy Remainers worried about No Deal who went LD but now returning to the Tories after the Brexit Deal has been done
Irrelevant poll at this stage, to even consider it as an ndicator to the next GE in normal times would be stupid, in the current climate it’s a waste of electrons.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
If the Conservatives are making a play on Brexit and current assumptions they will strongly, as you point out, Starmer needs to engage on the topic. Just hoping it will all go away, which seems to be his approach, is a bad strategy for him. The Tories are in their comfort zone on Brexit. There is absolutely no reason for Starmer to leave them there unchallenged.
People don't react well to being told they got it wrong by others who claim to be right. Bad psychology, even if they did actually make a big mistake and you are right. So Starmer needs a story about where to go from here.
Never mind exams R4. Press Gove on the vaccine delivery. Where is the detailed plan? Demonstrate Johnson is not going to f*ck this up.
I still think that there are much more likely to be problems and delays on the supply side than the delivery side. When we have more than 1m people working for the NHS delivering 2m vaccines a week really shouldn't be that hard. In 19/20 we managed to provide 15.3m flu vaccines in a similar sort of time to that indicated by Boris yesterday for a similar sort of number. I suspect that this year we did even more but I am struggling to find the numbers.
My wife and I had the jab for the first time in many years (possibly ever in her case) this year at our GP surgery. The possibility of combining Covid and flu seemed not a sensible risk to take. I think looked at from that perspective the targets for vaccine delivery seem pretty modest and will, I think, be driven by the supply side.
Have there been any hard stats on flu 2020-21? Anecdotally I see a lot of people saying they & theirs have managed to avoid colds and flu this winter, if verifiable an indication that lockdowns work (& take pressure of the NHS that is dealing with u-kno-what).
Not that I have seen but it stands to reason that the precautions taken against Covid should reduce the incidence of flu as well, masks especially.
Reported weekly along with the coronavirus testing figures - and remain very low. This is the latest (the previous couple of weeks weren't greatly different):
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/948638/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w53.pdf ...In week 52 2020, out of the 87,561 respiratory specimens reported through the Respiratory DataMart System (based on data received from 14 out of 16 laboratories), 6680 samples were positive for SARS-CoV-2 with an overall positivity of 7.6%. The highest positivity was noted in the 65+ year olds at 8.6% in week 52. The overall influenza positivity remained very low at 0.1% in week 52, with 1 of 1075 samples testing positive for flu (1 influenza A not subtyped) (Figure 12). Rhinovirus positivity increased slightly at 7.6% in week 52 compared to 11.0% in the previous week (Figure 13). The highest positivity by age group for rhinovirus remained in the under 5 year olds in week 52 (Figure 14). Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, parainfluenza and human metapneumovirus (hMPV) positivity all remained low at 0.1%, 1.3%, 0.1% and 0.0% respectively in week 52 (Figure 13)....
Rhinovirus seems to be pretty persistent - something noted all year in Australia too, where coronavirus infections remain extremely low.
Thanks. Can't help thinking that these incredibly low level of flu infections (for the time of year) are the difference between our NHS being overwhelmed already and hanging on. Long may it continue.
Japan needs to get it's vaccine programme going ASAP. Their idiotic stance on specific PIII trials to Japan is going to result in a huge slowdown of the rollout.
Brexit's done. Risk of No Deal has vanished. Wouldn't you expect Brexit to massively drop down the rankings? Most people on both sides just don't want to hear the bloody word ever again.
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Exactly my point. It's not me who's still constantly going on about Brexit in reference to the next GE.
Brexit will be part of the mood music of the next GE. If Boris is still leading the Tories going into the next GE, it will be because Brexit will have been largely horror-free and with some perceived upsides. Boris will use it to hammer home that he transcended the chaos of his predescessor and got the country through and out the other side of the Referendum decision. There'll be plenty of targeted mailings for those who previous canvassing has shown doing Brexit was a vote driver. Under the radar perhaps but it will be being playied hard in the Red Wall seats.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Good times for the LibDems though. Politics used to be a long game.
A very, very, very long game on the back of the last couple of polls, LDs down to almost MoE percentage points. Who are these LD to Conservative switchers?
I'm not concerned about that single poll which looks and smells like a classic outlier. If it becomes a clear trend talk to me then
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
Yep, BJ would be much more forthright and convincing with a more penetrating and informed media, but then he'd be perpetually hiding in a fridge; the eternal paradox.
yeah, a bit of luck at the start - although UK was seeded more widely than Italy which saw the North ravaged but the South broadly untouched. Eastern Europe locked down when the numbers of cases there was minimal.
Geography surely plays a big part - dense cities vs spread out communities. A mini-example would be my area in a big city - its mostly 1 or 2 bedroom flats and feels like a village, so its always had a lower rate that the surrounding MSOAs. If people get it, they isolate, arrange deliveries and each infection is, broadly, a dead end. We had something silly like 6 cases in total until September.
Then demographics - older, fatter populations will do worse at the hospitalisation and death stage.
And then, finally, political decisions may count for a small effect on top of that. Perceptions and confirmation bias mostly.
We have put a lot of import in numbers a few months into a situation that may take 24 months to play out. At least within Europe we can see a lot of countries that were broadly fine in the Spring being hammered now.
Personally I don't really buy this population density argument - I think it's a negligible factor that is easily counteracted by good policy. All countries have cities - yet many have kept cases extremely low. The reason Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Beijing have a microscopic number of deaths vs. London is policy response.
Small multi generational city centre apartments probably one of the biggest drivers followed by poor working conditions and family gatherings.
I've made a complaint to the BBC for having Gupta on Today to peddle her wrong opinions about herd immunity again.
There are so many other more interesting - and more likely to be valid - criticisms to make of lockdown, of why we're in a third one, what we're not doing that we should have done that might have avoided it.
But Gupta has been wrong at every stage of this emergency and the BBC should be finding people who haven't been proven so reliably wrong to talk to.
I wondered what on earth she was doing on there too. Maybe R4 should be blocked from the airwaves like Talk Radio on YouTube.
Her arguments weren't even self-consistent and the whole interview was a total waste of time. Yet she still gets invited.
I also heard that and struggled to understand what she was trying to argue. Was it "the reason the new variant is spreading more quickly than old ones is because there is already a degree of herd immunity against the old variants"? Because, on the face of it, that doesn't seem to fit the facts at all well.
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
Our fridge/freezer died during the panic run when the shelves were at their most empty. We hadn't panic-bought anything just shopped as normal but suddenly all our fresh and frozen produce was spoilt and we had what was in the cupboards only.
We survived just fine off the cupboards until our new fridge/freezer was delivered. I then went to the shops and bought what I could, there was no fresh chicken or other products we'd normally have in, but there was enough to get to keep everyone happy even if we altered our diet for a few days.
All in all left with the distinct impression there really was no reason to panic. Even though we lost all our fresh produce at the very worst possible moment nobody went hungry - like I suspect most families there's enough beans, soup and other random stuff accumulated in tins in the cupboard to live off even without anything fresh for a while.
In this country there was never going to be a reason to panic buy food. Even in a no deal brexit and border chaos like we saw late last month there was no reason to panic buy. It was all irresponsible ramping by the media and social media that caused the panic buying by a minority of idiots thinking they needed 17 loaves of bread and 44 pints of milk etc...
Thought about it yesterday, but we have enough in the freezer and frankly, the supplies were never a problem after the first week of lockdown. The doom-pornsters were just left with a billion bog rolls.
The best move I made was I bought a second freezer in February, followed by a big CostCo trip. Months of meat, fruit and veg.
We bought an extra freezer in late Feb and asked at the checkout if there had been a run on them. The assistant looked at us as if we were mad. I wonder what they thought a week later...
Our fridge/freezer died during the panic run when the shelves were at their most empty. We hadn't panic-bought anything just shopped as normal but suddenly all our fresh and frozen produce was spoilt and we had what was in the cupboards only.
We survived just fine off the cupboards until our new fridge/freezer was delivered. I then went to the shops and bought what I could, there was no fresh chicken or other products we'd normally have in, but there was enough to get to keep everyone happy even if we altered our diet for a few days.
All in all left with the distinct impression there really was no reason to panic. Even though we lost all our fresh produce at the very worst possible moment nobody went hungry - like I suspect most families there's enough beans, soup and other random stuff accumulated in tins in the cupboard to live off even without anything fresh for a while.
In the times before the Emergency it would be my habit to go to the supermarket several times a week - we have two within easy walking distance. Sometimes if they happened not to have exactly what I wanted at the first I'd walk to the second for it.
The point of stocking-up is to reduce my contact with the supermarket by an order of magnitude on this previous behaviour. It's not because I'm worried about going hungry.
Not my take at all. Starmer got his MPs to vote for the deal. It was a sell out by Starmer and if I'd been taking part in the poll I wouldn't have said Labour. Johnson has to own it hook line and sinker!
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
Yep, BJ would be much more forthright and convincing with a more penetrating and informed media, but then he'd be perpetually hiding in a fridge; the eternal paradox.
He'd probably do fewer press conferences for @Gallowgate to moan about, that's for sure.
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
Peston asks something dumb 1/100 Journalist asks a penetrating question about the border 100/1
When the history of covid comes to be written I don't think teachers will be among the lists of heroes. While the police the medical professions the fire departments and the shop keepers are keeping the country going all I see of teachers are those saying they wont do anything however well protected the school is because it might not be safe.
Roger that is complete rubbish. I can only assume you don't have school age children. Our kids' teachers have moved heaven and earth to deliver teaching during this pandemic, whether in person or as now remotely. The virus was ripping through schools - our daughter caught it there before Christmas - and teachers were absolutely right to highlight the risks. The government has provided too little money, no help with planning and has been making up policy as it goes along - one minute threatening legal action against schools that close, the next ordering them to close at a few hours' notice. Blaming the teachers for the ongoing fiasco that has resulted from the government’s own incompetence is just the latest outrage, but sadly typical of Johnson's divide and rule style of government.
The policy on schools has been chaotic, yes.
But what are the comparative covid rates amongst - eg supermarket workers, bus drivers, taxi drivers, food factory workers and any number of other essential jobs where people have continued working throughout the pandemic? Not to mention NHS staff.
I doubt schools are any worse than a food factory. Yet we all expect people to carry on working there because it is deemed essential.
Are teachers essential or not?
The school closure was not done out of any concern for teachers.
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
Peston asks something dumb 1/100 Journalist asks a penetrating question about the border 100/1
Skinny odds there Philip, skinny odds indeed.
The absolute banker is that Whitty and Vallance will indicate the lockdown will have to last much longer than Johnson has so far said.
Comments
You are right though that the best collaboration happens in person. That's something I've really struggled with as a student, as someone who learns and works best by bouncing ideas around off people.
I've noticed very little comment by the PBTories about the much lower hospitalization rate per 100K in Scotland in recent months, and the fact that the SG has called its lockdown at a much lower level than did the other three home nations, but did so when the numbers started going up sharply. Whether this is going to be sufficient is another matter, of course, but it does offer a counterexample of how things might have been done.
https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1346386079168012290
This is a make or break day for how fucked Scotland is after 5 days of flying blind
Flu Vaccines delivered by eligibility group in community pharmacy. They also have deliveries by location eg care home.
https://psnc.org.uk/flu-vaccination-data-for-2020-21/
It totals something over 2 million.
When I looked at these before it was significantly up by about 50% over the same time point last year. But they are delivering to extra eligibility groups I think (eg normal 50-64s), which is noise for comparisons.
And I am not sure of the scope - perhaps England and Wales?
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1346401901861068806?s=20
Sturgeon, however, is a better politician than Bozo (not necessarily a compliment), but in terms of their pathetic desire to cause division they are peas in the pod along with Donald Trump. I just wish all you nationalists would grow up
2024 will be fought on new issues. It won't be Covid and it won't be Brexit, but it may include legacy issues brought up because of them.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1346101605758881797?s=20
There's only one game in town now: plague and its economic fallout. Although, in coming weeks, expect "Summer holidays in Magaluf?" to rise up sharply...
Geography surely plays a big part - dense cities vs spread out communities. A mini-example would be my area in a big city - its mostly 1 or 2 bedroom flats and feels like a village, so its always had a lower rate that the surrounding MSOAs. If people get it, they isolate, arrange deliveries and each infection is, broadly, a dead end. We had something silly like 6 cases in total until September.
Then demographics - older, fatter populations will do worse at the hospitalisation and death stage.
And then, finally, political decisions may count for a small effect on top of that. Perceptions and confirmation bias mostly.
We have put a lot of import in numbers a few months into a situation that may take 24 months to play out. At least within Europe we can see a lot of countries that were broadly fine in the Spring being hammered now.
BBC News - Supermarket websites feel the strain of new lockdown
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55540485
'Boris Johnson takes BRUTAL swipe at Sturgeon’s NHS in emergency coronavirus announcement
BORIS JOHNSON couldn't resist hitting out at Nicola Sturgeon's plans to tackle the coronavirus in Scotland, as he emphasised "issues" of "resilience" for her health service. It came after the Scottish First Minister earlier appeared to announce plans from the important COBRA meeting before Mr Johnson had a chance to speak to the media.'
1. Sturgeon had planned ahead by delaying the start of term, so that she would have time to decide after New Year whether schools could reopen or not. This avoided the farce of urging parents to send their children to school for one day before telling them to stay at home.
2. Sturgeon had announced that she would be having a Cabinet meeting and making a statement on Sunday - before receiving a phone call from Johnson, and while the UK government position was still to keep schools opened. It's likely she had already decided at that point what most of the country had realised - that the spread of the variant cannot currently be controlled with open schools.
By thinking ahead, and being less resistant to reality, Sturgeon was able to avoid the farce of the one day reopening of schools. Johnson makes it so easy for her to look good in comparison.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/pharmacy-developing-world-shuts-doors-india-stockpiles-oxford/
So much for not needing manufacturing in UK, time to revoke their licence
Ain't going to happen.
I see the PB Fantasists are luxuriating in utter garbage Trumpist wet dreams again on here.
'The pants have a stain' conjures up a rather striking association to the British ear.
Who would be aided by revoking their licence?
It won't persuade people of anything other that the desperation of government parrots.
My wife spent the whole of last term in front of a class of 28 kids in a small classroom, with no PPE (not allowed in primary schools).
Who are these teachers who have been saying they "won't do anything however well protected the school is" ? Please provide a few links to back up your assertion.
The recent data on levels of infection in school children, and that showing that they pass it on at significant rates to their families, along with the data of increased infectivity of the new strain made these school closures inevitable.
If Boris is not leading the Tories into the next election, then it is hard to see his successor making much of Brexit. Nor SKS. Even if Brexit is disastrous "you voted for the deal mate...." cuts him off at the knees.
Edit: Of course once a patient, in for whatever, test +, then they will have to be handled differently not matter what they are being treated for presumably??
There's also again the argument to be had of whether we use the help by the vaccines to just try to keep within health system capacity, or whether we try to drive the virus to near zero so that test&trace and localized restrictions can deal with any outbreaks.
So Tory majority of 40
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=43&LAB=38&LIB=4&Brexit=3&Green=5&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVBrexit=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=19.3&SCOTLAB=19&SCOTLIB=5.7&SCOTBrexit=1&SCOTGreen=1.7&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=51.7&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nb
If hard lockdown can just about stabilise cases (there is some evidence for this in South Wales and Essex), vaccination can allow us to ease off gently over time. Bear in mind we need to get hospitalisation rates down, not just the fatality rates and this means vaccinating more than just the most vulnerable population.
This is the latest (the previous couple of weeks weren't greatly different):
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/948638/Weekly_Flu_and_COVID-19_report_w53.pdf
...In week 52 2020, out of the 87,561 respiratory specimens reported through the Respiratory DataMart System (based on data received from 14 out of 16 laboratories), 6680 samples were positive for SARS-CoV-2 with an overall positivity of 7.6%. The highest positivity was noted in the 65+ year olds at 8.6% in week 52. The overall influenza positivity remained very low at 0.1% in week 52, with 1 of 1075 samples testing positive for flu (1 influenza A not subtyped) (Figure 12).
Rhinovirus positivity increased slightly at 7.6% in week 52 compared to 11.0% in the previous week (Figure 13). The highest positivity by age group for rhinovirus remained in the under 5 year olds in week 52 (Figure 14). Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), adenovirus, parainfluenza and human metapneumovirus (hMPV) positivity all remained low at 0.1%, 1.3%, 0.1% and 0.0% respectively in week 52 (Figure 13)....
Rhinovirus seems to be pretty persistent - something noted all year in Australia too, where coronavirus infections remain extremely low.
OTOH how could you bear to miss those penetrating, informed questions that we always get from our glorious media? Maybe the 3rd or 5th time Boris is asked the same question about why his position was different last night as opposed to Marr on Sunday we might learn something truly fascinating.
We survived just fine off the cupboards until our new fridge/freezer was delivered. I then went to the shops and bought what I could, there was no fresh chicken or other products we'd normally have in, but there was enough to get to keep everyone happy even if we altered our diet for a few days.
All in all left with the distinct impression there really was no reason to panic. Even though we lost all our fresh produce at the very worst possible moment nobody went hungry - like I suspect most families there's enough beans, soup and other random stuff accumulated in tins in the cupboard to live off even without anything fresh for a while.
Journalist asks a penetrating question about the border 100/1
* I think. We hadn't looked for a new one in about a decade so couldn't say for certain, but it was pretty much exactly what I would have expected it to cost. In line with inflation on the old model we'd bought a decade earlier.
Though I wonder if chest freezers were more popular than fridge/freezers.
People don't react well to being told they got it wrong by others who claim to be right. Bad psychology, even if they did actually make a big mistake and you are right. So Starmer needs a story about where to go from here.
Because, on the face of it, that doesn't seem to fit the facts at all well.
The point of stocking-up is to reduce my contact with the supermarket by an order of magnitude on this previous behaviour. It's not because I'm worried about going hungry.
11bn a week? chicken feed!