My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
You are in good hands - the best comfort you can take. Good luck and hope it turns out to be a straightforward treatment.
Very kind of you. As always with nearly everyone on here you can have a jolly good barney, yet they are always so nice and helpful otherwise.
He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.
Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.
He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
Not if he is removed by impeachment
He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
In Spain - only registered nurses are allowed to give the jabs and thet are holding doses back to give the 2 injections. Meanwhile the figures are rising relentlessly and it is unlikely that anyone under 65 will receive anything possibly before the summer. I have to say the EU has not covered itself in glory on this one - and there seems no real sense of urgency. Quite bizarre.
But the EU as a whole overtook the UK yesterday in total number of jabs given, so that's something ...
Some Brexiteers were happy to compare EU-27 exports to UK against UK exports to EU-27 to argue that the EU had more to lose from no deal than the UK, so I'm sure they'd also admit that the EU is better than us on vaccinations
I am absolutely delighted if they are doing more jabs than us. As long as we are all doing as many as we can it just means fewer people will die. I think comparisons are useful for highlighting where countries are seriously falling down and trying to analyse why - as with the high death rates in Italy, Spain and the UK earlier last year. I have lots of friends in France and worry hugely about them with the poor way the French rollout is being handled.
More acutely I have lots of friends in the US and am seeing weekly comments about friends and family of them who have died. One lady I have known for 40 years or more lost both her parents and her in laws in the last month to covid. No one wins if people die unecessarilly when there is a vaccine available. No matter what country they are from.
Well, that makes me look a bit of a tit...
I agree, of course, with everything you say. If we hit our targets for roll out and are jabbing arms as fast as vaccine supplies are coming in and still get overtaken by others then that's great. A big task for the rich parts of the world when we've sorted out our own vaccination programmes will be ensuring that everyone else gets access too, no only because it's the right thing to do, but because we need to kill this thing off, not let it fester on in other countries and have the chance to adapt and come again.
Not at all. We all make sweeping statements and assume things about other posters here. No one is immune to it and it is just part and parcel of the mix. It makes life fun )
Agree entirely about the Third World. That is why the Oxford vaccine is so important. We ned the ability to get vaccines to every part of the world as quickly as possible. That is why I am so pleased the Government realises this and has put nearly £800 million so far into the project to get 1 billion doses of vaccine to developing nations.
Our entire foreign aid budget should be going on this scheme.
In a High Court hearing where the judge has just asked the DWP's QC if he's competing with someone using the Netflix downstairs. Not sure I can quite get used to the new normal..
Update: The QC is now setting off someone's Siri/Bixby etc, which is saying: "I didn't catch that. Try again?" Brief points of humour in a very, very tragic case...
Hopefully still plenty of confusion over tabs and bundles, the old classic?
As much as people joke or say that Brexit tore families apart, QAnon really is doing so.
There needs to be a proper investigation to find the person or persons behind QAnon. I know some media have done some digging and some suggestions who it is, but needs an official investigation who has been responsible for spreading this.
Of course. Whipping people up into a fervour, that Pence wasn't doing what he could, to go to Congress and that someone had to do something about the stolen election was nothing.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.
IANAD, obvs!
I'm retired. However I am (normally) very loud and talk a lot (I'm guessing that comes as no surprise). My first concern was cancer (as it appeared was my GPs concern), but it seems there are multitude of other equally horrible things it can be. I am of course ignoring the mild causes.
My only advice is to keep on top of this and to be politely assertive in getting a prompt diagnosis. Even for the worst case scenario, the earlier the diagnosis, the better the prognosis.
Yes, some good lines and good points in that. His tweets sit well with his speeches too. I personally think he is a great communicator. The only problem is what he communicates.
They say leaders are often replaced by their opposite and this is certainly true with Obama to Trump. On substance, obviously, one has a lot and the other has none, but also on this matter of style they are chalk & cheese. Obama speaks in perfect elegant sentences and seeks to touch the more noble, altruistic side of his listeners. By contrast a Trump speech meanders incoherently around, is peppered with barely articulate chuntered slogans, and aims to get his audience sneering and hating and riled up.
If you put the 2 of them on split screen, Obama and the Big Orange, showed it to a group of Martians, they could quite easily conclude the images they are viewing are from different phases of the human evolutionary story. And yet, at the end of an Obama speech, have you got the message as clearly as you have at the end of a Trump one? I'm not sure you have.
He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.
Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.
He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
Not if he is removed by impeachment
He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
And his lifetime security detail
The loss of his security detail seems extreme to me (an ardent Trump hater).
Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.
The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
They'll have to do some kind of New Labour rebranding and purge everyone associated with Trump.
Isn't a problem with the US system that they don't really get a new "leader" until the next presidential primaries, which are years away? Makes it very difficult for the party to put its house in order and rebrand meantime, even if they wanted to.
Yes, the lack of a “Leader of the Opposition”, who can make wide-ranging internal party changes between elections, is a negative of the US system.
I did suggest that, after Hillary lost, the Dems should have held their primaries in 2019 rather than 2020, so as to have a figure in precisely that role for 18 months running up to the election. I would now suggest the same of the Republicans.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
I don't think it's a particularly rare condition. It's easy to diagnose with a camera.
Someone in my choir had it. It was temporary and they were able to resume singing. I'm not sure if that was because of treatment or because it resolved spontaneously. I hope that's at least one positive data point for you!
He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.
Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.
He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
Not if he is removed by impeachment
He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.
Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.
He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
Not if he is removed by impeachment
He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
And his lifetime security detail
And his ability to charge top dollar for the rooms the security detail take up.
I've just been out for a local walk and was staggered by the number of white vans around and maskless workmen going in and out of houses. Chris Whitty was asked about tradesmen being allowed to enter houses on BBC Breakfast this week and he said that it was important to keep the economy going. But given the hospitality industry has been ravaged and there has been suggestions in the press that support bubbles might be axed, should tradesmen be allowed in for non-emergency work?
We had the lock on our front door fixed today (five days after reporting to the letting agent...) and we received a text from the locksmiths insisting that we reply confirming that we'd wear masks when talking to them, otherwise stay away from them while they worked, that none of us were self-isolating, etc.
I was encouraged by the seriousness that it demonstrated.
He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.
Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.
He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
Not if he is removed by impeachment
He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
And his lifetime security detail
The loss of his security detail seems extreme to me (an ardent Trump hater).
He's always saying how rich he is, surely he can afford it?
In all serious I can see that might be a concern, but if a President is impeached and convicted what things is it ok to do as punishment? Various official markers of status would presumably go.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.
IANAD, obvs!
I'm retired. However I am (normally) very loud and talk a lot (I'm guessing that comes as no surprise). My first concern was cancer (as it appeared was my GPs concern), but it seems there are multitude of other equally horrible things it can be. I am of course ignoring the mild causes.
Who was it who said that whenever they get a symptom, or even read about something in the papers, they are absolutely certain that they have the serious, inoperable version of it.
Whereas the vast majority of conditions are, literally, nothing - nice post from @AlwaysSinging upthread which should be of some comfort.
It was in Three men in a boat:
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.
The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
They'll have to do some kind of New Labour rebranding and purge everyone associated with Trump.
Isn't a problem with the US system that they don't really get a new "leader" until the next presidential primaries, which are years away? Makes it very difficult for the party to put its house in order and rebrand meantime, even if they wanted to.
Yes, the lack of a “Leader of the Opposition”, who can make wide-ranging internal party changes between elections, is a negative of the US system.
I did suggest that, after Hillary lost, the Dems should have held their primaries in 2019 rather than 2020, so as to have a figure in precisely that role for 18 months running up to the election. I would now suggest the same of the Republicans.
Not sure if having the presidential campaigning effectively start even earlier than it already does would necessarily help.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
You are in good hands - the best comfort you can take. Good luck and hope it turns out to be a straightforward treatment.
Very kind of you. As always with nearly everyone on here you can have a jolly good barney, yet they are always so nice and helpful otherwise.
Unusual diseases are just that; unusual. And unusual complications are also just that. This is a betting site. Unusual means longer and longer odds.
I think they picked the wrong day to send her out. She is going to get questions on Boris biking, the terrorist asylum seeker who got released and immediately killed the guys in the park, and the food boxes....
Do you mean questions about Boris bikin' and the stabbin' in Readin'?
Something that Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan and Beth Rigby have in common.
Good. The more people who talk like normal people in public life the better. Maybe one day people will realise how odd it is that so many of those in public life come from the same narrow segment of society and all sound the same, when our country has such a wide breadth of talent and so much diversity in how we speak.
No-one talks like that in the Midlands where I live. In fact a feature of the local accent here is to pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" words in a particularly emphatic way.
Having grown up 8 miles South of Birmingham, in all fairness, I would rather sound like Priti, Khan or Rigby, than the low- rent Jasper Carrot tones the experience left me with.
I grew up 10 miles South-East of Birmingham and sound nothing like Jasper Carrot.
I've just been out for a local walk and was staggered by the number of white vans around and maskless workmen going in and out of houses. Chris Whitty was asked about tradesmen being allowed to enter houses on BBC Breakfast this week and he said that it was important to keep the economy going. But given the hospitality industry has been ravaged and there has been suggestions in the press that support bubbles might be axed, should tradesmen be allowed in for non-emergency work?
The amount of minor building work (extensions, new driveways, patios and so on) going on around me is off the scale and has been for last four or five months. I never seen so many skips in the nearby streets.
As much as people joke or say that Brexit tore families apart, QAnon really is doing so.
That is a sad story indeed, but as much as we want to be there for family and them there for us and hope not to face what that woman has, there are limits to that familial obligation, so she did the right thing, which cannot have been easy.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
You are in good hands - the best comfort you can take. Good luck and hope it turns out to be a straightforward treatment.
Very kind of you. As always with nearly everyone on here you can have a jolly good barney, yet they are always so nice and helpful otherwise.
That is a very true comment and shows PB at its best
As much as people joke or say that Brexit tore families apart, QAnon really is doing so.
In fairness, this is nothing new really. Families often fall out over someone's espousal of extreme political, religious or other views, or lifestyle choices. Family members often face painful choices over shopping a close relative to the police.
Politics might well cause more rifts now it is more extreme, although one anecdotal tale doesn't really prove it. There was a short report just before the election where they had a chat to a late middle aged couple in a diner, the husband pro-Trump, the wife very much not. They asked how they coped with it and just shrugged as if they didn't understand the question and said words to the effect, "we just don't talk about it". Suspect that's very common.
I'm pretty sceptical of this metric. For example, if it were to take younger people longer to die than older people, in a growth phase of a pandemic you might well see the proportion of older deaths gradually decline because it is disproportionate at the start. His regression line needs error bars (give it a Bayesian prior or something) and then it would be clear that the "drop" is not significant.
SAGE will be looking at this more closely and we'll probably see signs in Malmesbury's data, but I don't expect them to appear for a couple more weeks (vaccination -> immunity -> infection that didn't happen -> death that didn't happen must be a 5-6 week process even if the non-infection happens at the first opportunity).
As others have replied to that Tweet - we need to know who these 'others' are that are nicking votes off everyone. Farage already?
Patrick O'Flynn tweets that Reform are flagging up 2% unprompted in this.
He adds yougov are going to start prompting for them.
Just FYI
Thanks. Might get a bit of a bump just from the name, to start with at least. Can't say I'm sure there's much of a market for them as the year goes on, but could upset some in the Shires.
I think they picked the wrong day to send her out. She is going to get questions on Boris biking, the terrorist asylum seeker who got released and immediately killed the guys in the park, and the food boxes....
Do you mean questions about Boris bikin' and the stabbin' in Readin'?
Something that Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan and Beth Rigby have in common.
Good. The more people who talk like normal people in public life the better. Maybe one day people will realise how odd it is that so many of those in public life come from the same narrow segment of society and all sound the same, when our country has such a wide breadth of talent and so much diversity in how we speak.
No-one talks like that in the Midlands where I live. In fact a feature of the local accent here is to pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" words in a particularly emphatic way.
That's true. Can vouch. Had an uncle there. Memories too of a chap who was not my uncle - Brian Walden.
At this point Labour being anything other than miles ahead is a major headache for them.
Don't be silly.
I expected even with the Covid crisis the Conservatives to be between 5 and 10 points ahead after a "successful" Brexit deal. Throw in Johnson getting vaccine procurement and it's roll out organised far better than expectations, I would have thought that nailed on. I have been posting this for the last 10 months.
If the Conservatives are to consistently lose their lead it will be on the back of the realisation that our economy might be in a very, very bad way. Now I am not blaming the Government for this (although I could start a debate on Brexit, but I won't) it is just my expectation that incumbents get the blame for bad news (and the spoils for good news).
I've just been out for a local walk and was staggered by the number of white vans around and maskless workmen going in and out of houses. Chris Whitty was asked about tradesmen being allowed to enter houses on BBC Breakfast this week and he said that it was important to keep the economy going. But given the hospitality industry has been ravaged and there has been suggestions in the press that support bubbles might be axed, should tradesmen be allowed in for non-emergency work?
The amount of minor building work (extensions, new driveways, patios and so on) going on around me is off the scale and has been for last four or five months. I never seen so many skips in the nearby streets.
Seems like every person I video call apologises as they have some workers doing something in the garden or elsewhere in the house causing noise, it's been crazy.
For anyone who’s worried about forgetting passwords - meet the guy who’s used up 8 of his 10 guesses at an encrypted memory stick password - containing 7,000 Bitcoin.
Not my area of expertise, but surely there's computer forensics kit that can image the encrypted data and so make as many copies as you need to try passwords against?
Hmm, possibly, but it would depend on the exact nature of the hardware, software and device.
If it’s designed properly, the file system isn’t revealed until the key is input, it’s not possible to flash the software on the device, and any attempt to physically dismantle the device destroys the data.
At this point, and with so much at stake, I’d be handing it to a high-end data recovery lab or the hardware manufacturer, and be prepared for a six-figure bill.
I'm no fan of Johnson, but I am at least thankful that we escaped PM Osborne. Okay, he's no Trump, but he always struck me as the most infantile and ideologically dangerous member of Cameron's cabinet.
Yes, Pence and McConnell deserve some credit for finally doing the right thing. They are not enemies of democracy, merely opponents of good governance.
No, the failure (so far) of the insurrection is not strong evidence that the constitution did it's job. A handful of people behaving differently would have tipped the balance. And with four more years, which would probably have happened without COVID, Trump would have been in a position to tip that balance.
This has been a lucky escape for democracy, not a show of its strength.
And the absurdity of the last sentence. Any sane person of left or right, however much they dislike Corbyn, can only roll their eyes in disgust at that.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
I don't think it's a particularly rare condition. It's easy to diagnose with a camera.
Someone in my choir had it. It was temporary and they were able to resume singing. I'm not sure if that was because of treatment or because it resolved spontaneously. I hope that's at least one positive data point for you!
--AS
You're in a choir?
It would be slightly antisocial if I was AlwaysSinging throughout everyday life... unless I lived in a musical, I suppose ; )
I'm pretty sceptical of this metric. For example, if it were to take younger people longer to die than older people, in a growth phase of a pandemic you might well see the proportion of older deaths gradually decline because it is disproportionate at the start. His regression line needs error bars (give it a Bayesian prior or something) and then it would be clear that the "drop" is not significant.
SAGE will be looking at this more closely and we'll probably see signs in Malmesbury's data, but I don't expect them to appear for a couple more weeks (vaccination -> immunity -> infection that didn't happen -> death that didn't happen must be a 5-6 week process even if the non-infection happens at the first opportunity).
--AS
Yes, fair points. We are only just now at the five-week point from the very first vaccinations. Still, I'll be looking at the metric to see if there's a clear fall by the end of the month.
In Spain - only registered nurses are allowed to give the jabs and thet are holding doses back to give the 2 injections. Meanwhile the figures are rising relentlessly and it is unlikely that anyone under 65 will receive anything possibly before the summer. I have to say the EU has not covered itself in glory on this one - and there seems no real sense of urgency. Quite bizarre.
But the EU as a whole overtook the UK yesterday in total number of jabs given, so that's something ...
Some Brexiteers were happy to compare EU-27 exports to UK against UK exports to EU-27 to argue that the EU had more to lose from no deal than the UK, so I'm sure they'd also admit that the EU is better than us on vaccinations
I am absolutely delighted if they are doing more jabs than us. As long as we are all doing as many as we can it just means fewer people will die. I think comparisons are useful for highlighting where countries are seriously falling down and trying to analyse why - as with the high death rates in Italy, Spain and the UK earlier last year. I have lots of friends in France and worry hugely about them with the poor way the French rollout is being handled.
More acutely I have lots of friends in the US and am seeing weekly comments about friends and family of them who have died. One lady I have known for 40 years or more lost both her parents and her in laws in the last month to covid. No one wins if people die unecessarilly when there is a vaccine available. No matter what country they are from.
Well, that makes me look a bit of a tit...
I agree, of course, with everything you say. If we hit our targets for roll out and are jabbing arms as fast as vaccine supplies are coming in and still get overtaken by others then that's great. A big task for the rich parts of the world when we've sorted out our own vaccination programmes will be ensuring that everyone else gets access too, no only because it's the right thing to do, but because we need to kill this thing off, not let it fester on in other countries and have the chance to adapt and come again.
Not at all. We all make sweeping statements and assume things about other posters here. No one is immune to it and it is just part and parcel of the mix. It makes life fun )
Agree entirely about the Third World. That is why the Oxford vaccine is so important. We ned the ability to get vaccines to every part of the world as quickly as possible. That is why I am so pleased the Government realises this and has put nearly £800 million so far into the project to get 1 billion doses of vaccine to developing nations.
Our entire foreign aid budget should be going on this scheme.
But is money the problem in terms of vaccine roll out in the poorest countries? It might be, but it seems a simplistic assumption.
If the problem is physical infrastructure to get vaccine out there, absolute limitations on manufacturing capacity, or lack of people able to administer it, that isn't going to be solved with a big cheque this year (afforded by taking money away from a sanitation project for instance). There is a longer term infrastructure challenge, and it might well be that the money might well be best continuing to assist with those projects.
I'm pretty sceptical of this metric. For example, if it were to take younger people longer to die than older people, in a growth phase of a pandemic you might well see the proportion of older deaths gradually decline because it is disproportionate at the start. His regression line needs error bars (give it a Bayesian prior or something) and then it would be clear that the "drop" is not significant.
SAGE will be looking at this more closely and we'll probably see signs in Malmesbury's data, but I don't expect them to appear for a couple more weeks (vaccination -> immunity -> infection that didn't happen -> death that didn't happen must be a 5-6 week process even if the non-infection happens at the first opportunity).
--AS
Yes, it's going to be at least two more weeks before we see any significant drop off in the 80+ hospitalisation rate as we're only now getting to a large number of people immunised and then there's another three weeks from here until last week's 1.3m additional people have a decent level of immunity. I think that's something that has been overlooked a bit by those who want the restrictions to end immediately on the 15th even if we do reach the 15m target, it will be another three weeks before those 15m have a good level of immunity and 30% of them won't reach it with one jab it means that significantly more people will need to be immunised before we can think about relaxing these current restrictions, I'd guess at mid-April before we're out of this current lockdown, or maybe Easter at a push.
It will be late summer before key groups are fully immunised with a second jab and the vast majority over over 18s have had at least one and that will be when we return to the old normal at least domestically, I think we will eventually require vaccine certificates for entry, hopefully Priti is ready for that battle and Shapps gets repeatedly punched in the face by some irate member of the public.
He apparently *personally* owes DB $300 million in the next few years via PGs.
Having his golf courses and hotels closed because of the pandemic wasn't in the business plan.
Well at least he'll have his presidential pension to ensure he can maintain dignity.
He seems like someone constantly racing ahead of the next scandal or debt collector, hoping to die before thr debts are due. Trump Jr and Ivanka can deal with it.
Not if he is removed by impeachment
He loses pension if convicted by the senate? Amusing.
And his lifetime security detail
The loss of his security detail seems extreme to me (an ardent Trump hater).
He can pay for his own. Pence is far more in need of lifetime security than he is now.
I'm pretty sceptical of this metric. For example, if it were to take younger people longer to die than older people, in a growth phase of a pandemic you might well see the proportion of older deaths gradually decline because it is disproportionate at the start. His regression line needs error bars (give it a Bayesian prior or something) and then it would be clear that the "drop" is not significant.
SAGE will be looking at this more closely and we'll probably see signs in Malmesbury's data, but I don't expect them to appear for a couple more weeks (vaccination -> immunity -> infection that didn't happen -> death that didn't happen must be a 5-6 week process even if the non-infection happens at the first opportunity).
--AS
Virus waves getting into care homes before they get to people at home is another factor that could front load the deaths in the older cohort.
Both effects could be mitigated by comparing deaths per case rather than comparing deaths directly.
In any case, it we started loosening restrictions solely based on that sort of statistic, the rise in case numbers can easily outweigh the reduction in deaths per case.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
And good to hear about your father.
I called up her local hospital to organise my mother's second jab and was given an appointment nine weeks after her first.
The hospital rang me up again today to organise her second jab and was surprised to hear that it was already scheduled.
Good old NHS! Still, better twice than not at all.
My parents (80+) had heard nothing so they called up. Were promptly given a slot for this Thursday. Great, but you obviously wonder what would have happened, or NOT happened, if they had not chased.
I think they picked the wrong day to send her out. She is going to get questions on Boris biking, the terrorist asylum seeker who got released and immediately killed the guys in the park, and the food boxes....
Do you mean questions about Boris bikin' and the stabbin' in Readin'?
Something that Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan and Beth Rigby have in common.
Good. The more people who talk like normal people in public life the better. Maybe one day people will realise how odd it is that so many of those in public life come from the same narrow segment of society and all sound the same, when our country has such a wide breadth of talent and so much diversity in how we speak.
No-one talks like that in the Midlands where I live. In fact a feature of the local accent here is to pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" words in a particularly emphatic way.
Having grown up 8 miles South of Birmingham, in all fairness, I would rather sound like Priti, Khan or Rigby, than the low- rent Jasper Carrot tones the experience left me with.
I grew up 10 miles South-East of Birmingham and sound nothing like Jasper Carrot.
Snap. Be thankful you didn't grow up 10 miles North-West of Birmingham !
In Spain - only registered nurses are allowed to give the jabs and thet are holding doses back to give the 2 injections. Meanwhile the figures are rising relentlessly and it is unlikely that anyone under 65 will receive anything possibly before the summer. I have to say the EU has not covered itself in glory on this one - and there seems no real sense of urgency. Quite bizarre.
But the EU as a whole overtook the UK yesterday in total number of jabs given, so that's something ...
Some Brexiteers were happy to compare EU-27 exports to UK against UK exports to EU-27 to argue that the EU had more to lose from no deal than the UK, so I'm sure they'd also admit that the EU is better than us on vaccinations
I am absolutely delighted if they are doing more jabs than us. As long as we are all doing as many as we can it just means fewer people will die. I think comparisons are useful for highlighting where countries are seriously falling down and trying to analyse why - as with the high death rates in Italy, Spain and the UK earlier last year. I have lots of friends in France and worry hugely about them with the poor way the French rollout is being handled.
More acutely I have lots of friends in the US and am seeing weekly comments about friends and family of them who have died. One lady I have known for 40 years or more lost both her parents and her in laws in the last month to covid. No one wins if people die unecessarilly when there is a vaccine available. No matter what country they are from.
Well, that makes me look a bit of a tit...
I agree, of course, with everything you say. If we hit our targets for roll out and are jabbing arms as fast as vaccine supplies are coming in and still get overtaken by others then that's great. A big task for the rich parts of the world when we've sorted out our own vaccination programmes will be ensuring that everyone else gets access too, no only because it's the right thing to do, but because we need to kill this thing off, not let it fester on in other countries and have the chance to adapt and come again.
Not at all. We all make sweeping statements and assume things about other posters here. No one is immune to it and it is just part and parcel of the mix. It makes life fun )
Agree entirely about the Third World. That is why the Oxford vaccine is so important. We ned the ability to get vaccines to every part of the world as quickly as possible. That is why I am so pleased the Government realises this and has put nearly £800 million so far into the project to get 1 billion doses of vaccine to developing nations.
Our entire foreign aid budget should be going on this scheme.
But is money the problem in terms of vaccine roll out in the poorest countries? It might be, but it seems a simplistic assumption.
If the problem is physical infrastructure to get vaccine out there, absolute limitations on manufacturing capacity, or lack of people able to administer it, that isn't going to be solved with a big cheque this year (afforded by taking money away from a sanitation project for instance). There is a longer term infrastructure challenge, and it might well be that the money might well be best continuing to assist with those projects.
India starts work this week. I suspect they'll be a lot learned there that other nations will be able to use.
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
And good to hear about your father.
I called up her local hospital to organise my mother's second jab and was given an appointment nine weeks after her first.
The hospital rang me up again today to organise her second jab and was surprised to hear that it was already scheduled.
Good old NHS! Still, better twice than not at all.
My parents (80+) had heard nothing so they called up. Were promptly given a slot for this Thursday. Great, but you obviously wonder what would have happened, or NOT happened, if they had not chased.
I keep trying the website but it keeps coming up zero appointments. Determined now to try phoning.
Edit. Did, at 4.45 and 'Vaccine Centre will re-open at 9am'.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
I've just been out for a local walk and was staggered by the number of white vans around and maskless workmen going in and out of houses. Chris Whitty was asked about tradesmen being allowed to enter houses on BBC Breakfast this week and he said that it was important to keep the economy going. But given the hospitality industry has been ravaged and there has been suggestions in the press that support bubbles might be axed, should tradesmen be allowed in for non-emergency work?
The amount of minor building work (extensions, new driveways, patios and so on) going on around me is off the scale and has been for last four or five months. I never seen so many skips in the nearby streets.
Seems like every person I video call apologises as they have some workers doing something in the garden or elsewhere in the house causing noise, it's been crazy.
is this anecdata or are the construction figures generally looking really good at the moment?
I'm no fan of Johnson, but I am at least thankful that we escaped PM Osborne. Okay, he's no Trump, but he always struck me as the most infantile and ideologically dangerous member of Cameron's cabinet.
Yes, Pence and McConnell deserve some credit for finally doing the right thing. They are not enemies of democracy, merely opponents of good governance.
No, the failure (so far) of the insurrection is not strong evidence that the constitution did it's job. A handful of people behaving differently would have tipped the balance. And with four more years, which would probably have happened without COVID, Trump would have been in a position to tip that balance.
This has been a lucky escape for democracy, not a show of its strength.
And the absurdity of the last sentence. Any sane person of left or right, however much they dislike Corbyn, can only roll their eyes in disgust at that.
I presume you mean the last sentence of Mike's excerpt from the article. If so, what conceivable objection to it can any sane person have? Starmer staying with Corbyn, despite the anti-Semitism and the lunacy, and despite knowing Corbyn was totally unsuited to be PM, is very much comparable to Republicans taking the same view in respect of Trump. There might be a difference of degree, but Osborne is not claiming that the degree is the same, or that it was acceptable behaviour of McConnell and Pence. Quite the opposite, he specifically says questions should be asked about it.
I think they picked the wrong day to send her out. She is going to get questions on Boris biking, the terrorist asylum seeker who got released and immediately killed the guys in the park, and the food boxes....
Do you mean questions about Boris bikin' and the stabbin' in Readin'?
Something that Priti Patel, Sadiq Khan and Beth Rigby have in common.
Good. The more people who talk like normal people in public life the better. Maybe one day people will realise how odd it is that so many of those in public life come from the same narrow segment of society and all sound the same, when our country has such a wide breadth of talent and so much diversity in how we speak.
No-one talks like that in the Midlands where I live. In fact a feature of the local accent here is to pronounce the "g" at the end of "ing" words in a particularly emphatic way.
Having grown up 8 miles South of Birmingham, in all fairness, I would rather sound like Priti, Khan or Rigby, than the low- rent Jasper Carrot tones the experience left me with.
I grew up 10 miles South-East of Birmingham and sound nothing like Jasper Carrot.
Solihull and the Forest of Arden are much posher than Hollywood. If you hear Nick Rhodes from Duran, Duran speak, I sound exactly like he does. Hardly surprising as we were in the same year in the same school.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
Can you imagine being one of the idiots trying to defend this nonsense in the morning?
I've just been out for a local walk and was staggered by the number of white vans around and maskless workmen going in and out of houses. Chris Whitty was asked about tradesmen being allowed to enter houses on BBC Breakfast this week and he said that it was important to keep the economy going. But given the hospitality industry has been ravaged and there has been suggestions in the press that support bubbles might be axed, should tradesmen be allowed in for non-emergency work?
The amount of minor building work (extensions, new driveways, patios and so on) going on around me is off the scale and has been for last four or five months. I never seen so many skips in the nearby streets.
Seems like every person I video call apologises as they have some workers doing something in the garden or elsewhere in the house causing noise, it's been crazy.
is this anecdata or are the construction figures generally looking really good at the moment?
Anecdata. I assume like most things figures are bad.
In Spain - only registered nurses are allowed to give the jabs and thet are holding doses back to give the 2 injections. Meanwhile the figures are rising relentlessly and it is unlikely that anyone under 65 will receive anything possibly before the summer. I have to say the EU has not covered itself in glory on this one - and there seems no real sense of urgency. Quite bizarre.
But the EU as a whole overtook the UK yesterday in total number of jabs given, so that's something ...
Some Brexiteers were happy to compare EU-27 exports to UK against UK exports to EU-27 to argue that the EU had more to lose from no deal than the UK, so I'm sure they'd also admit that the EU is better than us on vaccinations
I am absolutely delighted if they are doing more jabs than us. As long as we are all doing as many as we can it just means fewer people will die. I think comparisons are useful for highlighting where countries are seriously falling down and trying to analyse why - as with the high death rates in Italy, Spain and the UK earlier last year. I have lots of friends in France and worry hugely about them with the poor way the French rollout is being handled.
More acutely I have lots of friends in the US and am seeing weekly comments about friends and family of them who have died. One lady I have known for 40 years or more lost both her parents and her in laws in the last month to covid. No one wins if people die unecessarilly when there is a vaccine available. No matter what country they are from.
Well, that makes me look a bit of a tit...
I agree, of course, with everything you say. If we hit our targets for roll out and are jabbing arms as fast as vaccine supplies are coming in and still get overtaken by others then that's great. A big task for the rich parts of the world when we've sorted out our own vaccination programmes will be ensuring that everyone else gets access too, no only because it's the right thing to do, but because we need to kill this thing off, not let it fester on in other countries and have the chance to adapt and come again.
Not at all. We all make sweeping statements and assume things about other posters here. No one is immune to it and it is just part and parcel of the mix. It makes life fun )
Agree entirely about the Third World. That is why the Oxford vaccine is so important. We ned the ability to get vaccines to every part of the world as quickly as possible. That is why I am so pleased the Government realises this and has put nearly £800 million so far into the project to get 1 billion doses of vaccine to developing nations.
Our entire foreign aid budget should be going on this scheme.
Given that the budget (presumably in some instances) is funding schemes that deal with even more pressing things like feeding starving children, I find this a rather silly statement.
Scoop on @Telegraph: Thousands will be offered a vaccine passport over the coming months as part of a trial. Decision as to whether they'll actually be implemented by govt is still some way offhttps://t.co/WcX1xALC7h
Yes, some good lines and good points in that. His tweets sit well with his speeches too. I personally think he is a great communicator. The only problem is what he communicates.
They say leaders are often replaced by their opposite and this is certainly true with Obama to Trump. On substance, obviously, one has a lot and the other has none, but also on this matter of style they are chalk & cheese. Obama speaks in perfect elegant sentences and seeks to touch the more noble, altruistic side of his listeners. By contrast a Trump speech meanders incoherently around, is peppered with barely articulate chuntered slogans, and aims to get his audience sneering and hating and riled up.
If you put the 2 of them on split screen, Obama and the Big Orange, showed it to a group of Martians, they could quite easily conclude the images they are viewing are from different phases of the human evolutionary story. And yet, at the end of an Obama speech, have you got the message as clearly as you have at the end of a Trump one? I'm not sure you have.
Trump is the greatest political communicator of the last twenty years. If his guiding philosophy had been more coherent and he had had any ability to strategise I think he could have turned the US into a fascist state.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
Can you imagine being one of the idiots trying to defend this nonsense in the morning?
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
It IS designed to humiliate. Crucial to Tory thinking. Question is whether this is as great a factor as price-gouging, best mates, and simple lack of human respect and consideration for practical issues such as, y'know, basic nutrition.
Like that ham in clingfilm in another photo - the tuna must be a massive food poisoning risk.
PS:and the use of bank cash bags to hold food n another photo.
Mind you wait until you see the food parcels we send to Northern Ireland via airdrop when the haulage systems collapses over there due the Brexit changes.
Trump is going to declare bankruptcy in the next year or two. Nobody is going to do business with him.
The thing is, even given his behaviour before the election, if he had acted maturely upon losing, I think he would have been looking making big bucks...big tv show, loads of products flogged to the faithful, etc.
The 7% who will never vote Republican ever again are not going to make it easy for whoever they pick as their candidate.
They'll have to do some kind of New Labour rebranding and purge everyone associated with Trump.
Isn't a problem with the US system that they don't really get a new "leader" until the next presidential primaries, which are years away? Makes it very difficult for the party to put its house in order and rebrand meantime, even if they wanted to.
Yes, the lack of a “Leader of the Opposition”, who can make wide-ranging internal party changes between elections, is a negative of the US system.
I did suggest that, after Hillary lost, the Dems should have held their primaries in 2019 rather than 2020, so as to have a figure in precisely that role for 18 months running up to the election. I would now suggest the same of the Republicans.
Not sure if having the presidential campaigning effectively start even earlier than it already does would necessarily help.
The advantage is that the internal bickering (which can get rather heated, in true American style) happens more than a year before the election, giving the ‘LotO’ a daily chance to attack the incumbent and provide focus for the party itself.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
It's indefensible so I hope the Gov't wouldn't try, and get better food boxes (Morrison's effort looks decent) ASAP.
Scoop on @Telegraph: Thousands will be offered a vaccine passport over the coming months as part of a trial. Decision as to whether they'll actually be implemented by govt is still some way offhttps://t.co/WcX1xALC7h
Mind you wait until you see the food parcels we send to Northern Ireland via airdrop when the haulage systems collapses over there due the Brexit changes.
I'd like that, if it weren't such a worrying situation.
Bet you the food will have to come from the south.
I'm no fan of Johnson, but I am at least thankful that we escaped PM Osborne. Okay, he's no Trump, but he always struck me as the most infantile and ideologically dangerous member of Cameron's cabinet.
Yes, Pence and McConnell deserve some credit for finally doing the right thing. They are not enemies of democracy, merely opponents of good governance.
No, the failure (so far) of the insurrection is not strong evidence that the constitution did it's job. A handful of people behaving differently would have tipped the balance. And with four more years, which would probably have happened without COVID, Trump would have been in a position to tip that balance.
This has been a lucky escape for democracy, not a show of its strength.
And the absurdity of the last sentence. Any sane person of left or right, however much they dislike Corbyn, can only roll their eyes in disgust at that.
Yes, the Corbyn bit cheapened the whole piece. Nobody I know of in UK politics is anywhere near the threat Trump is, and although I don't think Corbyn would have been a good PM, he would have been a better leader than President Bungle.
I'm no fan of Johnson, but I am at least thankful that we escaped PM Osborne. Okay, he's no Trump, but he always struck me as the most infantile and ideologically dangerous member of Cameron's cabinet.
Yes, Pence and McConnell deserve some credit for finally doing the right thing. They are not enemies of democracy, merely opponents of good governance.
No, the failure (so far) of the insurrection is not strong evidence that the constitution did it's job. A handful of people behaving differently would have tipped the balance. And with four more years, which would probably have happened without COVID, Trump would have been in a position to tip that balance.
This has been a lucky escape for democracy, not a show of its strength.
And the absurdity of the last sentence. Any sane person of left or right, however much they dislike Corbyn, can only roll their eyes in disgust at that.
Osborne revealed his true colours with his line about "sleeping off a life on benefits." A nasty, cheap and dishonest line demonising the poor from a man born into a life of extraordinary privilege.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
I suspect the photo is not a genuine picture of the contents, but is some kind of stock photo. There's no mention of bottled water in the article, and why on earth would a supplier waste money on it? It's not exactly cheap, in this context.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
Can you imagine being one of the idiots trying to defend this nonsense in the morning?
It is noticeable that Chartwells' social media has gone completely quiet, as their reputation is demolished in a day. They haven't even tweeted out a picture of one of their "good" hampers, to show they really can do it, and this is a strange and rare aberration. That would be the obvious move. And yet, just total silence. Odd.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
It IS designed to humiliate. Crucial to Tory thinking. Question is whether this is as great a factor as price-gouging, best mates, and simple lack of human respect and consideration for practical issues such as, y'know, basic nutrition.
Like that ham in clingfilm in another photo - the tuna must be a massive food poisoning risk.
PS:and the use of bank cash bags to hold food n another photo.
Mind you wait until you see the food parcels we send to Northern Ireland via airdrop when the haulage systems collapses over there due the Brexit changes.
I'm no fan of Johnson, but I am at least thankful that we escaped PM Osborne. Okay, he's no Trump, but he always struck me as the most infantile and ideologically dangerous member of Cameron's cabinet.
Yes, Pence and McConnell deserve some credit for finally doing the right thing. They are not enemies of democracy, merely opponents of good governance.
No, the failure (so far) of the insurrection is not strong evidence that the constitution did it's job. A handful of people behaving differently would have tipped the balance. And with four more years, which would probably have happened without COVID, Trump would have been in a position to tip that balance.
This has been a lucky escape for democracy, not a show of its strength.
And the absurdity of the last sentence. Any sane person of left or right, however much they dislike Corbyn, can only roll their eyes in disgust at that.
Osborne revealed his true colours with his line about "sleeping off a life on benefits." A nasty, cheap and dishonest line demonising the poor from a man born into a life of extraordinary privilege.
Wasn't massively keen on "chopped up in my fridge" either.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
I suspect the photo is not a genuine picture of the contents, but is some kind of stock photo. There's no mention of bottled water in the article, and why on earth would a supplier waste money on it? It's not exactly cheap, in this context.
Tried a Google Image Searth. No hits. (but maybe someone else could do a better job.)
Yes, some good lines and good points in that. His tweets sit well with his speeches too. I personally think he is a great communicator. The only problem is what he communicates.
They say leaders are often replaced by their opposite and this is certainly true with Obama to Trump. On substance, obviously, one has a lot and the other has none, but also on this matter of style they are chalk & cheese. Obama speaks in perfect elegant sentences and seeks to touch the more noble, altruistic side of his listeners. By contrast a Trump speech meanders incoherently around, is peppered with barely articulate chuntered slogans, and aims to get his audience sneering and hating and riled up.
If you put the 2 of them on split screen, Obama and the Big Orange, showed it to a group of Martians, they could quite easily conclude the images they are viewing are from different phases of the human evolutionary story. And yet, at the end of an Obama speech, have you got the message as clearly as you have at the end of a Trump one? I'm not sure you have.
Trump is the greatest political communicator of the last twenty years. If his guiding philosophy had been more coherent and he had had any ability to strategise I think he could have turned the US into a fascist state.
Yes, some good lines and good points in that. His tweets sit well with his speeches too. I personally think he is a great communicator. The only problem is what he communicates.
They say leaders are often replaced by their opposite and this is certainly true with Obama to Trump. On substance, obviously, one has a lot and the other has none, but also on this matter of style they are chalk & cheese. Obama speaks in perfect elegant sentences and seeks to touch the more noble, altruistic side of his listeners. By contrast a Trump speech meanders incoherently around, is peppered with barely articulate chuntered slogans, and aims to get his audience sneering and hating and riled up.
If you put the 2 of them on split screen, Obama and the Big Orange, showed it to a group of Martians, they could quite easily conclude the images they are viewing are from different phases of the human evolutionary story. And yet, at the end of an Obama speech, have you got the message as clearly as you have at the end of a Trump one? I'm not sure you have.
Trump is the greatest political communicator of the last twenty years. If his guiding philosophy had been more coherent and he had had any ability to strategise I think he could have turned the US into a fascist state.
He could certainly have led the US through the pandemic and saved tens of thousands of lives as a result. He chose denial instead. Stable genius my arse.
On my bike ride earlier I had a, possibly Polly Toynbee-esque lot of nothingness thought. I had reckoned that a post Covid world would be more socially democratic, a la the end of WW2. Now I think the opposite - people will want to be able to do what they want after being trapped so long, and the economic crisis will make society even more chien-manger-chien than before.
So probably somewhere between the two, but people will see it through their bias and both will claim victory, you're welcome.
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
It IS designed to humiliate. Crucial to Tory thinking. Question is whether this is as great a factor as price-gouging, best mates, and simple lack of human respect and consideration for practical issues such as, y'know, basic nutrition.
Like that ham in clingfilm in another photo - the tuna must be a massive food poisoning risk.
It is really strange if you actually do think that the idea behind finding this extra £30 a week to feed these people was to humiliate them. I think the food packages I've seen are terrible, but I don't actually think the scheme was conceived with wickedness in mind - that is Grade A paranoia. I think we should also remember that the party you support favours giving people cardboard boxes to put their baby into. What's that if it isn't humiliating?
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.
IANAD, obvs!
I'm retired. However I am (normally) very loud and talk a lot (I'm guessing that comes as no surprise). My first concern was cancer (as it appeared was my GPs concern), but it seems there are multitude of other equally horrible things it can be. I am of course ignoring the mild causes.
Who was it who said that whenever they get a symptom, or even read about something in the papers, they are absolutely certain that they have the serious, inoperable version of it.
Whereas the vast majority of conditions are, literally, nothing - nice post from @AlwaysSinging upthread which should be of some comfort.
It was in Three men in a boat:
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
Cornwall Council and local health officials are urging residents in the Newquay area to take extra care - saying the number of people testing positive has "skyrocketed".
They say Covid-19 case numbers in one part of the town are comparable with some areas of London.
Is bottled water really essential? Is tap water that unhealthy?
Surely there's something more useful for the money.
Why would anyone drink tap water? I mean fish fornicate in it.
Ours comes from a borehole, just like Harrogate. Though it has more nitrates to be fair.
It is probably best not to ask what trace substances are in everyday food.
The everyday foodstuffs with the highest phytosanitary measures available in the UK are fruit from tropical sources, especially those with high acidity.
If you're making yourself a meal with, say, bread, tomatoes, cheese and perhaps some strips of ham if you eat meat, you could do a lot worse than top it off with some pineapple.
Thousands of Britons who have received their coronavirus vaccine are set to be offered a health passport as part of a government-funded trial taking place this month.
The passport, created by biometrics firm iProov and cybersecurity firm Mvine , will be issued in the form of a free app allowing users to digitally prove if they have received the vaccine.
On my bike ride earlier I had a, possibly Polly Toynbee-esque lot of nothingness thought. I had reckoned that a post Covid world would be more socially democratic, a la the end of WW2. Now I think the opposite - people will want to be able to do what they want after being trapped so long, and the economic crisis will make society even more chien-manger-chien than before.
So probably somewhere between the two, but people will see it through their bias and both will claim victory, you're welcome.
You weren't passing a red light at the time were you?
My father (94) finally got his vaccination today. Very efficiently done apparently. Surprised it was the Pfizer one.
On another note, particularly if @Foxy is here, I would be interested in any feedback on something else. I became very hoarse just before Christmas, without any other symptoms. My wife (a Doctor, but a pathologist and now working in drug safety so not her expertise) suggested leaving for a couple of weeks to see if it cleared up. It didn't. I saw the GP Friday evening who arranged a hospital appointment. On Monday I got a telephone appointment for today which was pretty impressive. I spoke to an ENT surgeon an hour ago who is going to organise an urgent hospital visit for me. His first reaction from my description and my voice was vocal cord paralysis. Not something my wife thought of. Don't like what I read about it, although he seemed pretty chipper about it. Obviously I am worried.
Sorry to hear that. Are you still at work and holding meetings? I have had a sore throat on and off for the past few months and realised that it is because I am sitting here shouting at zoom/teams meetings all day.
IANAD, obvs!
I'm retired. However I am (normally) very loud and talk a lot (I'm guessing that comes as no surprise). My first concern was cancer (as it appeared was my GPs concern), but it seems there are multitude of other equally horrible things it can be. I am of course ignoring the mild causes.
Who was it who said that whenever they get a symptom, or even read about something in the papers, they are absolutely certain that they have the serious, inoperable version of it.
Whereas the vast majority of conditions are, literally, nothing - nice post from @AlwaysSinging upthread which should be of some comfort.
It was in Three men in a boat:
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
Very good.
What do they say these days? A small amount of time googling symptoms on google inevitably ends up with a diagnosis of Leukemia.
A doctor once told me to google only diagnoses not symptoms. Advice I have taken since that point.
A friend told meanwhile me his doctor had told him he was suffering from google-induced hypertension...
WTF is with the bottled water???? What a waste of money, and plastic.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
I suspect the photo is not a genuine picture of the contents, but is some kind of stock photo. There's no mention of bottled water in the article, and why on earth would a supplier waste money on it? It's not exactly cheap, in this context.
Tried a Google Image Searth. No hits. (but maybe someone else could do a better job.)
Comments
https://twitter.com/clarissajanlim/status/1347699542146297859
As much as people joke or say that Brexit tore families apart, QAnon really is doing so.
Not completely surprising as that was the original form of the -ing ending, either -inga or -ingas
Nottingham was originally 'Snot-ingas-ham'
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/12/deutsche-bank-severs-ties-with-donald-trump
They say leaders are often replaced by their opposite and this is certainly true with Obama to Trump. On substance, obviously, one has a lot and the other has none, but also on this matter of style they are chalk & cheese. Obama speaks in perfect elegant sentences and seeks to touch the more noble, altruistic side of his listeners. By contrast a Trump speech meanders incoherently around, is peppered with barely articulate chuntered slogans, and aims to get his audience sneering and hating and riled up.
If you put the 2 of them on split screen, Obama and the Big Orange, showed it to a group of Martians, they could quite easily conclude the images they are viewing are from different phases of the human evolutionary story. And yet, at the end of an Obama speech, have you got the message as clearly as you have at the end of a Trump one? I'm not sure you have.
I did suggest that, after Hillary lost, the Dems should have held their primaries in 2019 rather than 2020, so as to have a figure in precisely that role for 18 months running up to the election. I would now suggest the same of the Republicans.
I was encouraged by the seriousness that it demonstrated.
He adds yougov are going to start prompting for them.
Just FYI
In all serious I can see that might be a concern, but if a President is impeached and convicted what things is it ok to do as punishment? Various official markers of status would presumably go.
I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch – hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge, I know – and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever – read the symptoms – discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it – wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance – found, as I expected, that I had that too, – began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically – read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
And good luck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzvNcckyd5g
He talks about infection rates in different countries - Ireland look to be in for a torrid time.
Politics might well cause more rifts now it is more extreme, although one anecdotal tale doesn't really prove it. There was a short report just before the election where they had a chat to a late middle aged couple in a diner, the husband pro-Trump, the wife very much not. They asked how they coped with it and just shrugged as if they didn't understand the question and said words to the effect, "we just don't talk about it". Suspect that's very common.
SAGE will be looking at this more closely and we'll probably see signs in Malmesbury's data, but I don't expect them to appear for a couple more weeks (vaccination -> immunity -> infection that didn't happen -> death that didn't happen must be a 5-6 week process even if the non-infection happens at the first opportunity).
--AS
Corbyn was nothing like trump. He had significant experience of elected office - and was/is thoroughly aware of its constraints.
Stupid partisan comment by Osborne which lets down his otherwise excellent analysis.
But there's still many countries for whom that number is still a distant dream. Poor sods.
On another note, my father was jabbed last week and my in laws will both be done this week. Things are definitely moving here after a slow start.
I expected even with the Covid crisis the Conservatives to be between 5 and 10 points ahead after a "successful" Brexit deal. Throw in Johnson getting vaccine procurement and it's roll out organised far better than expectations, I would have thought that nailed on. I have been posting this for the last 10 months.
If the Conservatives are to consistently lose their lead it will be on the back of the realisation that our economy might be in a very, very bad way. Now I am not blaming the Government for this (although I could start a debate on Brexit, but I won't) it is just my expectation that incumbents get the blame for bad news (and the spoils for good news).
If it’s designed properly, the file system isn’t revealed until the key is input, it’s not possible to flash the software on the device, and any attempt to physically dismantle the device destroys the data.
At this point, and with so much at stake, I’d be handing it to a high-end data recovery lab or the hardware manufacturer, and be prepared for a six-figure bill.
Yes, Pence and McConnell deserve some credit for finally doing the right thing. They are not enemies of democracy, merely opponents of good governance.
No, the failure (so far) of the insurrection is not strong evidence that the constitution did it's job. A handful of people behaving differently would have tipped the balance. And with four more years, which would probably have happened without COVID, Trump would have been in a position to tip that balance.
This has been a lucky escape for democracy, not a show of its strength.
And the absurdity of the last sentence. Any sane person of left or right, however much they dislike Corbyn, can only roll their eyes in disgust at that.
https://twitter.com/Kate_M_Proctor/status/1349032954102689802
--AS
If the problem is physical infrastructure to get vaccine out there, absolute limitations on manufacturing capacity, or lack of people able to administer it, that isn't going to be solved with a big cheque this year (afforded by taking money away from a sanitation project for instance). There is a longer term infrastructure challenge, and it might well be that the money might well be best continuing to assist with those projects.
It will be late summer before key groups are fully immunised with a second jab and the vast majority over over 18s have had at least one and that will be when we return to the old normal at least domestically, I think we will eventually require vaccine certificates for entry, hopefully Priti is ready for that battle and Shapps gets repeatedly punched in the face by some irate member of the public.
Surely there's something more useful for the money.
Both effects could be mitigated by comparing deaths per case rather than comparing deaths directly.
In any case, it we started loosening restrictions solely based on that sort of statistic, the rise in case numbers can easily outweigh the reduction in deaths per case.
Edit. Did, at 4.45 and 'Vaccine Centre will re-open at 9am'.
The quoted woman is correct. Imagine receiving this crap. Like it is designed to humiliate. The tuna dumped in a Starbucks coffee cup. Half a pepper wrapped in clingfilm. Two inches of carrot.
And all this during a plague.
As someone said on Twitter, even Dickens would have hesitated to describe someone doing this, for profit, to poor families, during a pandemic, as it would be regarded as unbelievable
(And so do frogs BTW. External fertilization, too ...).
Excuse me, while I just pick that name up!
Like that ham in clingfilm in another photo - the tuna must be a massive food poisoning risk.
PS:and the use of bank cash bags to hold food n another photo.
Nonetheless, good news if accurate.
Bet you the food will have to come from the south.
It is probably best not to ask what trace substances are in everyday food.
https://order-order.com/2021/01/12/merkel-says-trump-ban-is-problematic-decentralised-social-networks-see-surge-of-new-members/
That is if Trump was as smart as he thinks he is. He might even be able to earn a few quid out if it.
So probably somewhere between the two, but people will see it through their bias and both will claim victory, you're welcome.
They say Covid-19 case numbers in one part of the town are comparable with some areas of London.
If you're making yourself a meal with, say, bread, tomatoes, cheese and perhaps some strips of ham if you eat meat, you could do a lot worse than top it off with some pineapple.
https://twitter.com/hodgeamanda/status/1349038317564686336?s=20
Thousands of Britons who have received their coronavirus vaccine are set to be offered a health passport as part of a government-funded trial taking place this month.
The passport, created by biometrics firm iProov and cybersecurity firm Mvine , will be issued in the form of a free app allowing users to digitally prove if they have received the vaccine.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/01/12/exclusive-vaccine-passports-trialled-thousands-britons/
What do they say these days? A small amount of time googling symptoms on google inevitably ends up with a diagnosis of Leukemia.
A doctor once told me to google only diagnoses not symptoms. Advice I have taken since that point.
A friend told meanwhile me his doctor had told him he was suffering from google-induced hypertension...
--AS