Very good header. It ought to have been hilarious watching the Brexiteers extricating their tongues from Trump's backside but it wasn't. Too embarrassing for that.
The header's merely a net... look below to see the incredible haul. Masterful work from Meeks.
For me the type of people who need to look in the mirror and conduct a pitiless self-audit are those who were in the habit of responding to comments about how gruesome and toxic President Donald Trump was with the braindead and fatuous TDS - "Trump Derangement Syndrome".
FPT - I'd concede that there are challenges with the new Brexit deal in smoothing GB/NI trade - with both the EU and UK agreeing more work needs to be done there - and on the export and import of fresh meat and fish, where there are challenges with IT systems, customs agents, Covid-19 and the health certification process, with some rumours of "work to rule" on the French side, but on wine I very much doubt there will be a problem.
I've found new world wines easy to get hold of, more competitively priced and of better quality for some time.
I don't tend to get involved with these discussions on border trade as they are an exercise in frustration of people making mountains out of molehills, I only commented because I buy wine online a lot and most of it is from Australia or Italy. Neither seem particularly impacted since Brexit, I'm still able to buy everything just the same as I was beforehand. If a company is able to profitably import wine from Australia then they can apply identical procedures for EU wine.
You are wise not to do so.
They will end with either suck it up, accusations of denial, ignorance or idiocy, or Brexit means Brexit.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
Hmm, sounds like an idea advocated by Labour in the 70s.
Absolute nonsense on stilts from Mr Meeks who has been driven mad by Brexit.
Yes Johnson was right to call Trump "stupefyingly ignorant", but then the US public somehow elected him President and our politicians had to deal with him. Biden understands that, he's not a pettyminded ignorant partisan hack out for revenge because his side were rejected once.
Mr Meeks approaches the entire thing from his "oh woe is Brexit" viewpoint and expects America to grind an axe for him. That's not Biden.
Yes Biden is a career machine politician and as a career machine politician Biden's priority is to put the Trump MAGA madness behind him.
Boris prompty recognised and congratulated Biden on winning and they've been talking together on their priorities since. Biden reciprocated by giving Boris the customary first telephone call after Canada. Biden and Boris want to reset politics back to normal post Trump. They want to deal with climate change. They want to deal with China. They want to work together and they will do, petty poisoning the well because of photos from years ago is the kind of ludicrous sad nonsense that Biden won't have time to deal with.
I knew who'd written the article just from the headline.
I read similar takes just after Biden was elected about how he'd call Britain last, and only then to give Boris a bollocking, which he'd have to beg for.
Actually, I can kind of imagine Johnson asking for a bollocking, while purring "Oh Biden... put the boot in... pleeeaasse."
Now I can't get that image out of my mind.
Thanks @Casino_Royale. I now don't know how I will sleep this evening.
I don't know what's wrong with this site today.
Earlier today someone managed to make some homoerotica out of my views on national anthems, and now this..
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
And it happens in many areas.
Why should a pensioner get a cheaper Sunday dinner or sports ticket than someone in their 20s ?
I realise its a relict of the time when there were proportionally far fewer oldies and they tended to be poorer but its ridiculous now.
Very good header. It ought to have been hilarious watching the Brexiteers extricating their tongues from Trump's backside but it wasn't. Too embarrassing for that.
The header's merely a net... look below to see the incredible haul. Masterful work from Meeks.
For me the type of people who need to look in the mirror and conduct a pitiless self-audit are those who were in the habit of responding to comments about how gruesome and toxic President Donald Trump was with the braindead and fatuous TDS - "Trump Derangement Syndrome".
You know who you are. 👎
People like you backing Trump Galtieri "disputing" democracy?
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
We have a guy on here, swears he's only had 20 birthdays, but I reckon he's got to be much closer to eighty.....
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I think it's more that age, particularly with pre-existing conditions, is very well medically correlated whereas race has some specific incidence factors but it's weaker, varies widely and is mixed in with social, economic and language factors.
And there are some, of course, who have too much of a political interest in the concept of 'structural racism' to let the opportunity slip.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
The adverts asking for convalescent plasma seem to have stopped.
FPT - I'd concede that there are challenges with the new Brexit deal in smoothing GB/NI trade - with both the EU and UK agreeing more work needs to be done there - and on the export and import of fresh meat and fish, where there are challenges with IT systems, customs agents, Covid-19 and the health certification process, with some rumours of "work to rule" on the French side, but on wine I very much doubt there will be a problem.
I've found new world wines easy to get hold of, more competitively priced and of better quality for some time.
I don't tend to get involved with these discussions on border trade as they are an exercise in frustration of people making mountains out of molehills, I only commented because I buy wine online a lot and most of it is from Australia or Italy. Neither seem particularly impacted since Brexit, I'm still able to buy everything just the same as I was beforehand. If a company is able to profitably import wine from Australia then they can apply identical procedures for EU wine.
You are wise not to do so.
They will end with either suck it up, accusations of denial, ignorance or idiocy, or Brexit means Brexit.
Yes, I know. It's a fruitless exercise as well since Brexit really has happened and random twitter posts aren't going to undo it.
Some decent points made. But we need to be mates with someone. America in decline? Sure. China? Need to get tough with them. EU? Well. So who? Russia? No way! India? Maybe, but they are hardly a world power yet. Canada, Oz and NZ? Sure. But they aren't much bigger players than us even added together. Seems a heĺl of a reckless foreign policy gamble we've made to me.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
"She self identified as 18, Your Honour."
I identify as 78, which is why I've already been vaccinated.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
Of course, partial immunisation carries the same risk.
Good article here on why the UK, South African and Brazilian mutations have so much in common.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
Some decent points made. But we need to be mates with someone. America in decline? Sure. China? Need to get tough with them. EU? Well. So who? Russia? No way! India? Maybe, but they are hardly a world power yet. Canada, Oz and NZ? Sure. But they aren't much bigger players than us even added together. Seems a heĺl of a reckless foreign policy gamble we've made to me.
FPT - I'd concede that there are challenges with the new Brexit deal in smoothing GB/NI trade - with both the EU and UK agreeing more work needs to be done there - and on the export and import of fresh meat and fish, where there are challenges with IT systems, customs agents, Covid-19 and the health certification process, with some rumours of "work to rule" on the French side, but on wine I very much doubt there will be a problem.
I've found new world wines easy to get hold of, more competitively priced and of better quality for some time.
I don't tend to get involved with these discussions on border trade as they are an exercise in frustration of people making mountains out of molehills, I only commented because I buy wine online a lot and most of it is from Australia or Italy. Neither seem particularly impacted since Brexit, I'm still able to buy everything just the same as I was beforehand. If a company is able to profitably import wine from Australia then they can apply identical procedures for EU wine.
You are wise not to do so.
They will end with either suck it up, accusations of denial, ignorance or idiocy, or Brexit means Brexit.
Yes, I know. It's a fruitless exercise as well since Brexit really has happened and random twitter posts aren't going to undo it.
Of course not. Still it is worth showing how much of Brexit was based on a false prospectus, as we see with the Scottish fishermen.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
Of course, partial immunisation carries the same risk.
Good article here on why the UK, South African and Brazilian mutations have so much in common.
I have another meeting with them next week on that subject so I'll have to bring it up, they didn't mention it when we were discussing the downsides of the single jab policy, though.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
Clinical trials have certainly been somewhat inconclusive regarding its effectiveness, and this shows a potentially serious danger from its use.
Note that this was a study of a single immunocompromised patient (lymphoma), and also that the resistant virus was still neutralised by a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies (cf Regeneron). Though of course pharmaceutical MAbs are simply too expensive to be available in large parts of the world.
... This is a single case report and therefore limited conclusions can be drawn about generalisability. In addition to documenting the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Spike 𝚫H69/𝚫V70 + D796H in vivo, conferring broad reduction in susceptibility to serum/plasma polyclonal, but no effect on a set of predominantly RBD-targeting monoclonal antibodies, these data highlight that infection control measures need to be specifically tailored to the needs of immunocompromised patients...
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
"She self identified as 18, Your Honour."
Or worse, the other way around.
Some self-identification madness - of the type we're told, by some, that never happens - in the Metro today:
While I can see that in the UK, immunising the over seventies will have a big effect on mortality, in America it looks less so.
There doesn't seem to be a way to reconcile these excess death figures with the official Covid death figures, even when you account for relative population sizes.
American excess deaths looking at that chart should massive exceed British ones proportionately yet our death toll is supposedly worse? I don't believe it. If our excess deaths were to the scale of American ones then we would have had 2k-3k excess deaths each interval through the summer but instead it was negligible or in the hundreds.
I suspect that when all is said and done the official death tolls used in tables at the moment as a proportion of excess deaths will vary wildly between countries.
I think it's a very difficult to compare between countries. EG I wonder what the mortality rate in a normal year would be in both countries. The US not having universal health care must have a bearing
Absolute nonsense on stilts from Mr Meeks who has been driven mad by Brexit.
Yes Johnson was right to call Trump "stupefyingly ignorant", but then the US public somehow elected him President and our politicians had to deal with him. Biden understands that, he's not a pettyminded ignorant partisan hack out for revenge because his side were rejected once.
Mr Meeks approaches the entire thing from his "oh woe is Brexit" viewpoint and expects America to grind an axe for him. That's not Biden.
Yes Biden is a career machine politician and as a career machine politician Biden's priority is to put the Trump MAGA madness behind him.
Boris prompty recognised and congratulated Biden on winning and they've been talking together on their priorities since. Biden reciprocated by giving Boris the customary first telephone call after Canada. Biden and Boris want to reset politics back to normal post Trump. They want to deal with climate change. They want to deal with China. They want to work together and they will do, petty poisoning the well because of photos from years ago is the kind of ludicrous sad nonsense that Biden won't have time to deal with.
I knew who'd written the article just from the headline.
I read similar takes just after Biden was elected about how he'd call Britain last, and only then to give Boris a bollocking, which he'd have to beg for.
Actually, I can kind of imagine Johnson asking for a bollocking, while purring "Oh Biden... put the boot in... pleeeaasse."
Now I can't get that image out of my mind.
Thanks @Casino_Royale. I now don't know how I will sleep this evening.
I don't know what's wrong with this site today.
Earlier today someone managed to make some homoerotica out of my views on national anthems, and now this..
Is it lockdown? Please say it's lockdown.
Stressful situations can reveal who we really are, for better and worse.
Today is showing the dark side of that. We just never expected it to be so dark.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
I'm sorry, that's simply not true.
Age is a social construct, like gender. People should be free to identify as whatever age they like, and should be treated accordingly.
I don't think that worked out for this chap.
A Dutch "positivity trainer" has launched a legal battle to change his age and boost his dating prospects.
Emile Ratelband, 69, wants to shift his birthday from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969, comparing the change to identifying as being transgender.
"We live in a time when you can change your name and change your gender. Why can't I decide my own age?" he said.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
Clinical trials have certainly been somewhat inconclusive regarding its effectiveness, and this shows a potentially serious danger from its use.
Note that this was a study of a single immunocompromised patient (lymphoma), and also that the resistant virus was still neutralised by a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies (cf Regeneron). Though of course pharmaceutical MAbs are simply too expensive to be available in large parts of the world.
... This is a single case report and therefore limited conclusions can be drawn about generalisability. In addition to documenting the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Spike 𝚫H69/𝚫V70 + D796H in vivo, conferring broad reduction in susceptibility to serum/plasma polyclonal, but no effect on a set of predominantly RBD-targeting monoclonal antibodies, these data highlight that infection control measures need to be specifically tailored to the needs of immunocompromised patients...
I guess that's the difference between a half finished course of penicillin and a broad spectrum course. I'm definitely going to ask more questions about this in my next chat with them, as well as whether the single jab policy also opens up this risk because it wasn't raised as a potential downside last time.
Very good header. It ought to have been hilarious watching the Brexiteers extricating their tongues from Trump's backside but it wasn't. Too embarrassing for that.
The header's merely a net... look below to see the incredible haul. Masterful work from Meeks.
For me the type of people who need to look in the mirror and conduct a pitiless self-audit are those who were in the habit of responding to comments about how gruesome and toxic President Donald Trump was with the braindead and fatuous TDS - "Trump Derangement Syndrome".
You know who you are. 👎
Actually there is a point that I'd like clarified about all the folk (more than a few of whom were on here) who said that the great thing about Trump is that he'd pwn the libs and annoy all the right people. Now that Trump has been irrevocably revealed as a criminal, petty, lying, incompetent disgrace who has damaged the USA more than GWB and ushered in a regime more radical than the Sandinistas, does that mean that these folk are the ones to have been well and truly pwnd?
Some decent points made. But we need to be mates with someone. America in decline? Sure. China? Need to get tough with them. EU? Well. So who? Russia? No way! India? Maybe, but they are hardly a world power yet. Canada, Oz and NZ? Sure. But they aren't much bigger players than us even added together. Seems a heĺl of a reckless foreign policy gamble we've made to me.
While I can see that in the UK, immunising the over seventies will have a big effect on mortality, in America it looks less so.
There doesn't seem to be a way to reconcile these excess death figures with the official Covid death figures, even when you account for relative population sizes.
American excess deaths looking at that chart should massive exceed British ones proportionately yet our death toll is supposedly worse? I don't believe it. If our excess deaths were to the scale of American ones then we would have had 2k-3k excess deaths each interval through the summer but instead it was negligible or in the hundreds.
I suspect that when all is said and done the official death tolls used in tables at the moment as a proportion of excess deaths will vary wildly between countries.
I think it's a very difficult to compare between countries. EG I wonder what the mortality rate in a normal year would be in both countries. The US not having universal health care must have a bearing
True but that should be consistent with their own baseline in using excess death figures.
According to that source US excess deaths in 2020 are about 500k, so that should pro-rata to about 100k in the UK to be the same.
I believe our excess deaths were a bit above 70k instead.
So their excess deaths were about 1.4 times ours? Yet their death toll is supposedly lower? Something does not add up.
It would sort of be ironic if, in trying to bring as much military muscle as it can to secure its transition of power, the US had essentially sealed its new leader in a steel ring filled with enemy troops.
I assume it's more random individuals they're worried about, but, still.
It would sort of be ironic if, in trying to bring as much military muscle as it can to secure its transition of power, the US had essentially sealed its new leader in a steel ring filled with enemy troops.
I assume it's more random individuals they're worried about, but, still.
Classic technique
Grand Vizier: Your Majesty, your life is in danger, let me bring in troops to protect you. Sultan: Of course, it's not as though Grand Viziers are always devious, scheming madmen. Bring in the troopers Troops kill Sultan
Absolute nonsense on stilts from Mr Meeks who has been driven mad by Brexit.
Yes Johnson was right to call Trump "stupefyingly ignorant", but then the US public somehow elected him President and our politicians had to deal with him. Biden understands that, he's not a pettyminded ignorant partisan hack out for revenge because his side were rejected once.
Mr Meeks approaches the entire thing from his "oh woe is Brexit" viewpoint and expects America to grind an axe for him. That's not Biden.
Yes Biden is a career machine politician and as a career machine politician Biden's priority is to put the Trump MAGA madness behind him.
Boris prompty recognised and congratulated Biden on winning and they've been talking together on their priorities since. Biden reciprocated by giving Boris the customary first telephone call after Canada. Biden and Boris want to reset politics back to normal post Trump. They want to deal with climate change. They want to deal with China. They want to work together and they will do, petty poisoning the well because of photos from years ago is the kind of ludicrous sad nonsense that Biden won't have time to deal with.
Some decent points made. But we need to be mates with someone. America in decline? Sure. China? Need to get tough with them. EU? Well. So who? Russia? No way! India? Maybe, but they are hardly a world power yet. Canada, Oz and NZ? Sure. But they aren't much bigger players than us even added together. Seems a heĺl of a reckless foreign policy gamble we've made to me.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
Clinical trials have certainly been somewhat inconclusive regarding its effectiveness, and this shows a potentially serious danger from its use.
Note that this was a study of a single immunocompromised patient (lymphoma), and also that the resistant virus was still neutralised by a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies (cf Regeneron). Though of course pharmaceutical MAbs are simply too expensive to be available in large parts of the world.
... This is a single case report and therefore limited conclusions can be drawn about generalisability. In addition to documenting the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Spike 𝚫H69/𝚫V70 + D796H in vivo, conferring broad reduction in susceptibility to serum/plasma polyclonal, but no effect on a set of predominantly RBD-targeting monoclonal antibodies, these data highlight that infection control measures need to be specifically tailored to the needs of immunocompromised patients...
I guess that's the difference between a half finished course of penicillin and a broad spectrum course. I'm definitely going to ask more questions about this in my next chat with them, as well as whether the single jab policy also opens up this risk because it wasn't raised as a potential downside last time.
I’d be interested in the answer. Quite a few did raise it as a potential downside risk, I think (@Foxy too), but how large that might be is debated.
But note these mutations arose at a late stage in a patient essentially without an immune system. A vaccinated immune system encountering infection will produce responses other than those simply generated by the vaccine shot.
Were I in government, I’d at least be asking the boffins at Oxford, Imperial and the pharmas how soon they could get a vaccine against the mutated spike(s) into work for early clinical trials. It wouldn’t be that expensive, and it seems a sensible precaution starting now rather than later.
A rather exaggerated article, Biden will be better than Trump was on issues such as Nato and tackling Covid and climate change for the UK government.
Now that a UK and EU trade deal is agreed a UK and US trade deal is also less necessary anyway, plus as a hard border in Ireland has been avoided so has the main obstacle for a trade deal with a Biden led USA
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
The US may have used its military power somewhere else. Stories of air strikes on Iranian backed Iraqi militia sites tonight.
Awaiting confirmation but just a little leaving present for Biden there.
He’s been leaving little piles of crap everywhere for the new administration since the election defeat. Announcing the release of the vaccine stockpile, only for everyone to find out it didn’t exist was a good one.
Some decent points made. But we need to be mates with someone. America in decline? Sure. China? Need to get tough with them. EU? Well. So who? Russia? No way! India? Maybe, but they are hardly a world power yet. Canada, Oz and NZ? Sure. But they aren't much bigger players than us even added together. Seems a heĺl of a reckless foreign policy gamble we've made to me.
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
It's been pointed out that Lab have previously had polls like this in Wales only to rebound at actual election time for the Westminster seats anyway so that may not be a huge deal, but my gods, the LDs are rooted to that floor - it never ceases to surprise that they do worse in Wales now than any other part of GB. https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1351300994743881729
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Fed up seems like truly epic understatement. What rotten luck, commiserations seems inadequate.
While I can see that in the UK, immunising the over seventies will have a big effect on mortality, in America it looks less so.
There doesn't seem to be a way to reconcile these excess death figures with the official Covid death figures, even when you account for relative population sizes.
American excess deaths looking at that chart should massive exceed British ones proportionately yet our death toll is supposedly worse? I don't believe it. If our excess deaths were to the scale of American ones then we would have had 2k-3k excess deaths each interval through the summer but instead it was negligible or in the hundreds.
I suspect that when all is said and done the official death tolls used in tables at the moment as a proportion of excess deaths will vary wildly between countries.
I think it's a very difficult to compare between countries. EG I wonder what the mortality rate in a normal year would be in both countries. The US not having universal health care must have a bearing
True but that should be consistent with their own baseline in using excess death figures.
According to that source US excess deaths in 2020 are about 500k, so that should pro-rata to about 100k in the UK to be the same.
I believe our excess deaths were a bit above 70k instead.
So their excess deaths were about 1.4 times ours? Yet their death toll is supposedly lower? Something does not add up.
Unfortunately I believe your UK excess deaths figure is substantially too low. According to the ONS the UK excess deaths for 2020 was 91,000 over the previous 5 year average.
A better way than raw figures might be to look at percentages. The UK excess deaths was 15% over normal average yearly death rate. I don't think anyone can give you the equivalent number for the US at the moment because of the fragmented nature of recording between states. Currently the CDC is saying it could be anywhere from 346K and 469K for the year. Some states were reporting over 600% excess deaths in the early summer peak whilst others have had almost no excess deaths at all. With such a huge range I am not sure we will be able to draw any comparisons for quite some time.
This is the Cambridge paper about antibody escape. Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf Abstract SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
The immunology expert I spoke to likened convalescent plasma to an incomplete antibiotics course but for viruses. They have previously advised their government not to use it at all because it would likely result in mutations that would end up being immune to the current vaccines in development. They aren't a medical doctor so they didn't have ethical concerns of not using potentially life saving treatment, but now that it's been proven to be ineffective new guidance should be issued to stop using it globally.
Of course, partial immunisation carries the same risk.
Good article here on why the UK, South African and Brazilian mutations have so much in common.
I think this is in fact a good thing. If the same mutations are occurring independently it is called convergent evolution, and it means that these mutations have the greatest selective advantage of all the possible mutations. This is potentially good because it reduces the number of possible mutations that we must worry about.
If the virus could go on constantly mutating and escaping immunity the pandemic would last a very long time. If there are only a few mutations that are advantageous to the virus we can develop vaccines against them, and the virus will have nowhere else to go. These mutations that keep coming up in different places have shown that they are the most advantageous mutations to the virus.
The virus is unlucky in that its host has genetic technology that can be used against it, but even without any technology viruses are contained in the end by various biological constraints. It remains to be seen whether the human species can end the pandemic more quickly and with fewer deaths by using social distancing and vaccines, than would have been the case without them.
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Fed up seems like truly epic understatement. What rotten luck, commiserations seems inadequate.
It's been pointed out that Lab have previously had polls like this in Wales only to rebound at actual election time for the Westminster seats anyway so that may not be a huge deal, but my gods, the LDs are rooted to that floor - it never ceases to surprise that they do worse in Wales now than any other part of GB. https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1351300994743881729
LDs even behind Farage's new anti lockdown party, Reform UK, in Wales on that poll
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Best wishes.
Does he have the set of gadgets that Foxy recommended? The oxymeter, blood pressure monitor and the flow meter? They were a big big help to two families of friends who got it.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
After NCIS, it's a wonder USF+WS hasn't had 15 series in prime time. "This week the team investigate an armadillo which is not as it first seems"...
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
Without in any way denigrating the career path, as it seems these services may well have armed units for good reasons sometimes, I do wonder how someone in law enforcement finds themselves working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement.
I imagine their interactions with other agencies is a bit like the first episode of NCIS, where the characters have to explain to people what they do. Joke was on then, 18 seasons and 2 spin offs in apparently all crimes are Naval crimes.
While I can see that in the UK, immunising the over seventies will have a big effect on mortality, in America it looks less so.
There doesn't seem to be a way to reconcile these excess death figures with the official Covid death figures, even when you account for relative population sizes.
American excess deaths looking at that chart should massive exceed British ones proportionately yet our death toll is supposedly worse? I don't believe it. If our excess deaths were to the scale of American ones then we would have had 2k-3k excess deaths each interval through the summer but instead it was negligible or in the hundreds.
I suspect that when all is said and done the official death tolls used in tables at the moment as a proportion of excess deaths will vary wildly between countries.
I think it's a very difficult to compare between countries. EG I wonder what the mortality rate in a normal year would be in both countries. The US not having universal health care must have a bearing
True but that should be consistent with their own baseline in using excess death figures.
According to that source US excess deaths in 2020 are about 500k, so that should pro-rata to about 100k in the UK to be the same.
I believe our excess deaths were a bit above 70k instead.
So their excess deaths were about 1.4 times ours? Yet their death toll is supposedly lower? Something does not add up.
Unfortunately I believe your UK excess deaths figure is substantially too low. According to the ONS the UK excess deaths for 2020 was 91,000 over the previous 5 year average.
A better way than raw figures might be to look at percentages. The UK excess deaths was 15% over normal average yearly death rate. I don't think anyone can give you the equivalent number for the US at the moment because of the fragmented nature of recording between states. Currently the CDC is saying it could be anywhere from 346K and 469K for the year. Some states were reporting over 600% excess deaths in the early summer peak whilst others have had almost no excess deaths at all. With such a huge range I am not sure we will be able to draw any comparisons for quite some time.
US reporting is a mess. A very political mess. In Florida they arrested a lady who was embarrassing the state government with those horrible facts things.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
I must admit I always had trouble getting my head round the idea that the US coastguard - which I had envisaged as something akin to our RNLI or the UK coastguard - was a military unit that served overseas in WW2 including the D Day landings. They also operated in Vietnam in the 60s.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
Without in any way denigrating the career path, as it seems these services may well have armed units for good reasons sometimes, I do wonder how someone in law enforcement finds themselves working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement.
I imagine their interactions with other agencies is a bit like the first episode of NCIS, where the characters have to explain to people what they do. Joke was on then, 18 seasons and 2 spin offs in apparently all crimes are Naval crimes.
Apparently some agencies have hit the one of people not believing them, in real life, when they start waving the badges.
IIRC United States Fish and Wildlife Service are the only agency where Hollywood style shootouts with the bad guys actually happen - the ones with all the bad guys having automatic weapons and training - because of the cartel stuff.
Apparently, in the US, going Federal in law enforcement is seen as a big career jump for cops. And within that, there is a pecking order - FBI very high, likewise Secret Service. So there are lots of people trying to climb the ladder - NOAA SWAT is probably better than... something....
This was the other paper on convalescent serum antibodies and mutations tending towards viral escape. (Note this is using convalescent serum; the only results so far published using post vaccination serum have only been in relation to the recent UK mutation, but I think more are expected this week.)
Comprehensive mapping of mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain that affect recognition by polyclonal human serum antibodies https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.31.425021v1.full.pdf Abstract The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could impair recognition of the virus by human antibody-mediated immunity. To facilitate prospective surveillance for such evolution, we map how convalescent serum antibodies are impacted by all mutations to the spike’s receptor-binding domain (RBD), the main target of serum neutralizing activity. Binding by polyclonal serum antibodies is affected by mutations in three main epitopes in the RBD, but there is substantial variation in the impact of mutations both among individuals and within the same individual over time. Despite this inter- and intra-person heterogeneity, the mutations that most reduce antibody binding usually occur at just a few sites in the RBD’s receptor binding motif. The most important site is E484, where neutralization by some sera is reduced >10-fold by several mutations, including one in emerging viral lineages in South Africa and Brazil. Going forward, these serum escape maps can inform surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
It's been pointed out that Lab have previously had polls like this in Wales only to rebound at actual election time for the Westminster seats anyway so that may not be a huge deal, but my gods, the LDs are rooted to that floor - it never ceases to surprise that they do worse in Wales now than any other part of GB.
Well, YBarddCwsc is very soft-hearted & does not like to put the boot in when a party is down
But, it is not a huge surprise -- if you chose candidates from metropolitan London (Jane Dodds, Alex Carlile, Lembit Opik) to represent rural Welsh seats -- you end up on your belly lower than Farage and Reckless.
London already has way more seats than Wales, there is no reason at all for still more London carpet baggers to represent Welsh seats.
My guess is that the LibDems may hold Brecon & Radnorshire in the Senedd elections, as they have unaccountably chosen someone from the constituency to replace Kirsty Williams. He is William Powell, & he does not possess serious character flaws -- although he has the elderly LibDem disease of trying to kiss pretty young activists.
But, I don't see the LibDems doubling their representation to ... err ... 2. The students have not forgiven or forgotten Cleggy, so Ceredigion is out. And the Tories are well fortified in Montgomeryshire.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
I must admit I always had trouble getting my head round the idea that the US coastguard - which I had envisaged as something akin to our RNLI or the UK coastguard - was a military unit that served overseas in WW2 including the D Day landings. They also operated in Vietnam in the 60s.
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best Excitable boy, they all said And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest Excitable boy, they all said
He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark Excitable boy, they all said And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark Excitable boy, they all said Well, he's just an excitable boy
He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom Excitable boy, they all said And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home Excitable boy, they all said Well, he's just an excitable boy
After ten long years they let him out of the home Excitable boy, they all said And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones Excitable boy, they all said Well, he's just an excitable boy
Boris Johnson has long modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill. Both have led the nation at a time of crisis and now it seems that they have something else in common: a love of the power nap.
And lo the US military deny any knowledge of airstrikes reported by locals in Iraq. Given the reports came via Iraqi militias, someone has got their booms wrong.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
I must admit I always had trouble getting my head round the idea that the US coastguard - which I had envisaged as something akin to our RNLI or the UK coastguard - was a military unit that served overseas in WW2 including the D Day landings. They also operated in Vietnam in the 60s.
The Coasties do indeed do lifeboats and SAR, and they also do general law enforcement (e.g. they manage traffic on inland waterways like the Hudson River) as well as the sort of quasi-naval law enforcement against smuggling and the like that historically was handled by revenue and customs, which indeed was one of the USGC’s antecedents.
To be honest, the US could abolish the whole of the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Navy, save for the SSBNs for nuclear deterrence, and rely solely on Coast Guard and Marine Corps for conventional defense and would practically be able to defend itself against any plausible threat as effectively as it does today.
Boris Johnson has long modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill. Both have led the nation at a time of crisis and now it seems that they have something else in common: a love of the power nap.
ICE absolutely should be abolished. It didn't even exist until 2003 and has become a truly nasty, hate-filled toxic and rotten institution.
That's quick work, most institutions need several more decades before they go off the rails like that unless they are literally set up for that nasty purpose.
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
The complete list of US Federal agencies which have armed units is hilarious, or ridiculous.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
Without in any way denigrating the career path, as it seems these services may well have armed units for good reasons sometimes, I do wonder how someone in law enforcement finds themselves working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement.
I imagine their interactions with other agencies is a bit like the first episode of NCIS, where the characters have to explain to people what they do. Joke was on then, 18 seasons and 2 spin offs in apparently all crimes are Naval crimes.
Apparently some agencies have hit the one of people not believing them, in real life, when they start waving the badges.
IIRC United States Fish and Wildlife Service are the only agency where Hollywood style shootouts with the bad guys actually happen - the ones with all the bad guys having automatic weapons and training - because of the cartel stuff.
Apparently, in the US, going Federal in law enforcement is seen as a big career jump for cops. And within that, there is a pecking order - FBI very high, likewise Secret Service. So there are lots of people trying to climb the ladder - NOAA SWAT is probably better than... something....
Policing is very, very decentralized here, as is local government generally. The UK practice since the Second World War of steadily amalgamating local authorities, police forces and fire brigades into bigger and bigger organizations would be anathema here.
And it has to be understood that a lot of specialist police departments in the US are really glorified security guards: but having them as trained and sworn LEOs is to give them some legal protection beyond that of private security if things fo bad. Not that I’m defending that, but that is an explanation.
Boris Johnson has long modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill. Both have led the nation at a time of crisis and now it seems that they have something else in common: a love of the power nap.
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
Boris Johnson has long modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill. Both have led the nation at a time of crisis and now it seems that they have something else in common: a love of the power nap.
Very good header. It ought to have been hilarious watching the Brexiteers extricating their tongues from Trump's backside but it wasn't. Too embarrassing for that.
Vaccination goes well in the UK with over 80% receiving it and covid infection reduces to tiny levels.
But in France vaccination is take by only 40%, as polls suggest, with covid infections continuing to simmer.
Might we be looking at long term travel restrictions between the UK and France or indeed France and other countries which manage to crush covid down ?
I suspect that, if the French see that life in the UK has returned to normal, while they are still struggling with restrictions, then vaccines there will become a bit more popular.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Happy Martin Luther King Day (just).
But if it helps to set up vaccinations in mosques, temples and gudwaras, and use people of all ethnicities in the campaigns, then we do need to do that.
Boris Johnson has long modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill. Both have led the nation at a time of crisis and now it seems that they have something else in common: a love of the power nap.
I think he is still suffering from COVID (plus having a newborn). He looks bloody awful most of the time.
He’s 56, probably of average health for someone his age, has good healthcare but has a very stressful time both at work and home. This virus really is a nasty bugger, and can be for a long time after the initial attack.
Interesting study out of the US, on whether smart watches, that measure temperature, heart rate and variability can identify someone positive for Covid-19 before systems become apparent.
How on earth will they decide who is BAME and thus entitled to "jump the queue"?
Seriously. A colour chart? Self declaration? An apartheid style "pencil test"? How??
No, just a matter of being in the top 4 groups due to underlying conditions. Diabetes, heart disease and kidney disease are all more common in British South Asians, but so is anti-vaxxing. There is already a targeting campaign because of this as an issue. Covid certainly seems racist.
Using mosques as vaccination centres as well as cathedrals might be a useful step.
Difficult to disagree with any of that - it's more the idea any race group should be "prioritied" that sticks in the throat.
I mean if we're going to go along that route with risk profiles, men should probably be getting the jab before women....
It's curious though. We can't prioritise on race or gender but we can on age?
Age is not a fiction. Not a "social construct". You just have to look at birth certificate. Age is a fact.
Race is much more contentious. The Left has spent decades telling us race is a fallacy, a biological nonsense. Yet now it matters?
Either race exists, and we can say who is what, or it does not, in which case this policy is a load of illogical bollocks, and will only annoy people.
“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Happy Martin Luther King Day (just).
But if it helps to set up vaccinations in mosques, temples and gudwaras, and use people of all ethnicities in the campaigns, then we do need to do that.
As it happens our local blood bank is in a local Hindu Community Centre. When you want to give blood and get an appointment then go to the Community Centre and get your blood drawn. Ample free parking with the centre, while lots of people going in and out for prayers and other activites. Works for everyone.
I question the wisdom of ex-mandarins getting involved in things like this, but On Topic this report seems accurate and to be expected: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55714276
"Johnson 'glad' to see Trump go, says ex-Civil Service head Lord Sedwill"
F1: Ladbrokes' prices have shifted a little. Verstappen down from 6 to 5.5.
Russell down again, from 17 to 13.
Seems still no word on Hamilton. I do think he'll end up signing a contract, but it's mid-January (or late, if you want to halve it). Cutting things unnecessarily fine, it seems.
Here we go - NY Times have got hold of the un-redacted versions of documents released by a Texas antitrust court, relating to the deal between Google and Facebook to keep US online advertising rates (where the two companies have a combined 90% market share) artificially high.
Meanwhile, social network Parler has their website back up at Parler.com, having had to re-write their back end after Amazon’s AWS cancelled their service.
Interesting study out of the US, on whether smart watches, that measure temperature, heart rate and variability can identify someone positive for Covid-19 before systems become apparent.
Comments
You know who you are. 👎
They will end with either suck it up, accusations of denial, ignorance or idiocy, or Brexit means Brexit.
Earlier today someone managed to make some homoerotica out of my views on national anthems, and now this..
Is it lockdown? Please say it's lockdown.
It should be abolished wholesale and its duties either reassigned to other agencies like the FBI or if need be replaced with a body fit for purpose.
I wait for some number-crunchy PB-er to point out that this actually happened as recently as last Thursday, but still.
Apart from anything else, it seems to suggest that the therapeutic use of convalescent plasma has helped drive viral evolution to evade immune response.
Neutralising antibodies drive Spike mediated SARS-CoV-2 evasion
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927v1.full.pdf
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein is critical for virus infection via engagement of ACE2, and amino acid variation in Spike is increasingly appreciated. Given both vaccines and therapeutics are designed around Wuhan-1 Spike, this raises the theoretical possibility of virus escape, particularly in immunocompromised individuals where prolonged viral replication occurs. Here we report fatal SARS-CoV-2 escape from neutralising antibodies in an immune suppressed individual treated with convalescent plasma, generating whole genome ultradeep sequences by both short and long read technologies over 23 time points spanning 101 days. Little evolutionary change was observed in the viral population over the first 65 days despite two courses of remdesivir. However, following convalescent plasma we observed dynamic virus population shifts, with the emergence of a dominant viral strain bearing D796H in S2 and ΔH69/ΔV70 in the S1 NTD of the Spike protein. As serum neutralisation waned, viruses with the escape genotype diminished in frequency, before returning during a final, unsuccessful course of convalescent plasma. In vitro, the Spike escape variant conferred decreased sensitivity to multiple units of convalescent plasma/sera from different recovered patients, whilst maintaining infectivity similar to wild type. These data reveal strong positive selection on SARS-CoV-2 during convalescent plasma therapy and identify the combination of Spike mutations D796H and ΔH69/ΔV70 as a broad antibody resistance mechanism against commonly occurring antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2.
And there are some, of course, who have too much of a political interest in the concept of 'structural racism' to let the opportunity slip.
America in decline? Sure. China? Need to get tough with them. EU? Well.
So who? Russia? No way! India? Maybe, but they are hardly a world power yet.
Canada, Oz and NZ? Sure. But they aren't much bigger players than us even added together.
Seems a heĺl of a reckless foreign policy gamble we've made to me.
Good article here on why the UK, South African and Brazilian mutations have so much in common.
https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1351231305212694536?s=19
I cannot keep up with the number of US law enforcement agencies. Apparently the Supreme Court has its own police, though it is tiny. The Library of Congress Police no longer exist it seems. Though these guys do, including the US National Zoological Park Police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution_Office_of_Protection_Services
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ
Note that this was a study of a single immunocompromised patient (lymphoma), and also that the resistant virus was still neutralised by a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies (cf Regeneron). Though of course pharmaceutical MAbs are simply too expensive to be available in large parts of the world.
... This is a single case report and therefore limited conclusions can be drawn about generalisability.
In addition to documenting the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 Spike 𝚫H69/𝚫V70 + D796H in vivo, conferring broad reduction in susceptibility to serum/plasma polyclonal, but no effect on a set of predominantly RBD-targeting monoclonal antibodies, these data highlight that infection control measures need to be specifically tailored to the needs of immunocompromised patients...
https://metro.co.uk/2021/01/18/trans-woman-jailed-for-15-years-for-raping-another-woman-13921362/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Today is showing the dark side of that. We just never expected it to be so dark.
How does that compare to the flu death rate by country ?
A Dutch "positivity trainer" has launched a legal battle to change his age and boost his dating prospects.
Emile Ratelband, 69, wants to shift his birthday from 11 March 1949 to 11 March 1969, comparing the change to identifying as being transgender.
"We live in a time when you can change your name and change your gender. Why can't I decide my own age?" he said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46133262
According to that source US excess deaths in 2020 are about 500k, so that should pro-rata to about 100k in the UK to be the same.
I believe our excess deaths were a bit above 70k instead.
So their excess deaths were about 1.4 times ours? Yet their death toll is supposedly lower? Something does not add up.
I assume it's more random individuals they're worried about, but, still.
Awaiting confirmation but just a little leaving present for Biden there.
Grand Vizier: Your Majesty, your life is in danger, let me bring in troops to protect you.
Sultan: Of course, it's not as though Grand Viziers are always devious, scheming madmen. Bring in the troopers
Troops kill Sultan
And so on
The epic song over long puppet sex scene holds up though, no question.
Quite a few did raise it as a potential downside risk, I think (@Foxy too), but how large that might be is debated.
But note these mutations arose at a late stage in a patient essentially without an immune system. A vaccinated immune system encountering infection will produce responses other than those simply generated by the vaccine shot.
Were I in government, I’d at least be asking the boffins at Oxford, Imperial and the pharmas how soon they could get a vaccine against the mutated spike(s) into work for early clinical trials. It wouldn’t be that expensive, and it seems a sensible precaution starting now rather than later.
Now that a UK and EU trade deal is agreed a UK and US trade deal is also less necessary anyway, plus as a hard border in Ireland has been avoided so has the main obstacle for a trade deal with a Biden led USA
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Announcing the release of the vaccine stockpile, only for everyone to find out it didn’t exist was a good one.
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1351302000240160768?s=20
Best wishes to your family.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1351300994743881729
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1351303022652100614?s=20
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/excess-deaths-2020-soared-highest-23303817
A better way than raw figures might be to look at percentages. The UK excess deaths was 15% over normal average yearly death rate. I don't think anyone can give you the equivalent number for the US at the moment because of the fragmented nature of recording between states. Currently the CDC is saying it could be anywhere from 346K and 469K for the year. Some states were reporting over 600% excess deaths in the early summer peak whilst others have had almost no excess deaths at all. With such a huge range I am not sure we will be able to draw any comparisons for quite some time.
If the virus could go on constantly mutating and escaping immunity the pandemic would last a very long time. If there are only a few mutations that are advantageous to the virus we can develop vaccines against them, and the virus will have nowhere else to go. These mutations that keep coming up in different places have shown that they are the most advantageous mutations to the virus.
The virus is unlucky in that its host has genetic technology that can be used against it, but even without any technology viruses are contained in the end by various biological constraints. It remains to be seen whether the human species can end the pandemic more quickly and with fewer deaths by using social distancing and vaccines, than would have been the case without them.
Best wishes, Cyclefree.
United States Fish and Wildlife Service has heavily armed units - they dress and look like soldiers.
Mind you, at the light end they are dealing with rednecks with guns and at the heavy end, butting heads with drug cartels smuggling stuff through the less inhabited places.
Does he have the set of gadgets that Foxy recommended? The oxymeter, blood pressure monitor and the flow meter? They were a big big help to two families of friends who got it.
"This week the team investigate an armadillo which is not as it first seems"...
I imagine their interactions with other agencies is a bit like the first episode of NCIS, where the characters have to explain to people what they do. Joke was on then, 18 seasons and 2 spin offs in apparently all crimes are Naval crimes.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/01/18/957914495/data-scientist-rebekah-jones-facing-arrest-turns-herself-in-to-florida-authoriti
The charges are basically horse manure...
Vaccination goes well in the UK with over 80% receiving it and covid infection reduces to tiny levels.
But in France vaccination is take by only 40%, as polls suggest, with covid infections continuing to simmer.
Might we be looking at long term travel restrictions between the UK and France or indeed France and other countries which manage to crush covid down ?
IIRC United States Fish and Wildlife Service are the only agency where Hollywood style shootouts with the bad guys actually happen - the ones with all the bad guys having automatic weapons and training - because of the cartel stuff.
Apparently, in the US, going Federal in law enforcement is seen as a big career jump for cops. And within that, there is a pecking order - FBI very high, likewise Secret Service. So there are lots of people trying to climb the ladder - NOAA SWAT is probably better than... something....
(Note this is using convalescent serum; the only results so far published using post vaccination serum have only been in relation to the recent UK mutation, but I think more are expected this week.)
Comprehensive mapping of mutations to the SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain that affect recognition by polyclonal human serum antibodies
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.31.425021v1.full.pdf
Abstract
The evolution of SARS-CoV-2 could impair recognition of the virus by human antibody-mediated immunity. To facilitate prospective surveillance for such evolution, we map how convalescent serum antibodies are impacted by all mutations to the spike’s receptor-binding domain (RBD), the main target of serum neutralizing activity. Binding by polyclonal serum antibodies is affected by mutations in three main epitopes in the RBD, but there is substantial variation in the impact of mutations both among individuals and within the same individual over time. Despite this inter- and intra-person heterogeneity, the mutations that most reduce antibody binding usually occur at just a few sites in the RBD’s receptor binding motif. The most important site is E484, where neutralization by some sera is reduced >10-fold by several mutations, including one in emerging viral lineages in South Africa and Brazil. Going forward, these serum escape maps can inform surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 evolution.
The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55702855
But, it is not a huge surprise -- if you chose candidates from metropolitan London (Jane Dodds, Alex Carlile, Lembit Opik) to represent rural Welsh seats -- you end up on your belly lower than Farage and Reckless.
London already has way more seats than Wales, there is no reason at all for still more London carpet baggers to represent Welsh seats.
My guess is that the LibDems may hold Brecon & Radnorshire in the Senedd elections, as they have unaccountably chosen someone from the constituency to replace Kirsty Williams. He is William Powell, & he does not possess serious character flaws -- although he has the elderly LibDem disease of trying to kiss pretty young activists.
But, I don't see the LibDems doubling their representation to ... err ... 2. The students have not forgiven or forgotten Cleggy, so Ceredigion is out. And the Tories are well fortified in Montgomeryshire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banff-class_sloop
Unlike the ancient 4 stackers they were very well thought of, after an initial misunderstanding.
Someone messed up their maths and it appeared they had poor stability. When it was actually measured, it turned out they were very good sea boats.
https://twitter.com/antonioregalado/status/1350188290188734467
CDU/CSU 35%, Greens 17%, SPD 15%, AfD 11%, FDP 9%, Linke 8%
CDU and Greens down 1% from the last poll, AfD and FDP up 1% each and SPD and Linke unchanged.
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/insa.htm
Aus vs India Draw at 2.72 Betfair
9 wkts left max 84 overs but likely to be weather interrupted so probably only need to last 60 overs.
Should be odds on the draw IMO
DYOR
by Warren Zevon
Well, he went down to dinner in his Sunday best
Excitable boy, they all said
And he rubbed the pot roast all over his chest
Excitable boy, they all said
He took in the four a.m. show at the Clark
Excitable boy, they all said
And he bit the usherette's leg in the dark
Excitable boy, they all said
Well, he's just an excitable boy
He took little Suzie to the Junior Prom
Excitable boy, they all said
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home
Excitable boy, they all said
Well, he's just an excitable boy
After ten long years they let him out of the home
Excitable boy, they all said
And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bones
Excitable boy, they all said
Well, he's just an excitable boy
Boris Johnson has long modelled himself on Sir Winston Churchill. Both have led the nation at a time of crisis and now it seems that they have something else in common: a love of the power nap.
“Nature has not intended mankind to work from eight in the morning until midnight,” Churchill once remarked, “without that refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/boris-johnson-is-partial-to-a-power-nap-b8tgps0bs
To be honest, the US could abolish the whole of the Army, Air Force, Space Force and Navy, save for the SSBNs for nuclear deterrence, and rely solely on Coast Guard and Marine Corps for conventional defense and would practically be able to defend itself against any plausible threat as effectively as it does today.
And it has to be understood that a lot of specialist police departments in the US are really glorified security guards: but having them as trained and sworn LEOs is to give them some legal protection beyond that of private security if things fo bad. Not that I’m defending that, but that is an explanation.
Happy Martin Luther King Day (just).
But if it helps to set up vaccinations in mosques, temples and gudwaras, and use people of all ethnicities in the campaigns, then we do need to do that.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.06.20226803v1.full.pdf
TL:DR. Yes, the heart rate variability increases shortly after infection.
Just do what needs to be done.
"Johnson 'glad' to see Trump go, says ex-Civil Service head Lord Sedwill"
F1: Ladbrokes' prices have shifted a little. Verstappen down from 6 to 5.5.
Russell down again, from 17 to 13.
Seems still no word on Hamilton. I do think he'll end up signing a contract, but it's mid-January (or late, if you want to halve it). Cutting things unnecessarily fine, it seems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/technology/google-facebook-ad-deal-antitrust.html
Not looking good for them.
Meanwhile, social network Parler has their website back up at Parler.com, having had to re-write their back end after Amazon’s AWS cancelled their service.
And there is very little flu around at the moment.