Highest to date and up 18% (total) and 19% (first) vs yesterday.
For my education, are those the figures for Saturday, or the figures reported on Saturday (i.e. primarily Friday's numbers?) Seems very prompt (what my nephews used to call 'very previous') if FOR Saturday.
Therein lies a tale. The release itself says "8th December 2020 to 22nd January 2021". However, we (some of us) reckon that because of reporting delays, it really covers data further into the past.
This theory matches the pattern of daily numbers seen so far. Given that GPs etc close on weekends, you'd expect a weekend dip. Yet the dip seen is out of phase with the weekend -
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Well in ignorance people can say something very offensive, and treating people doing something offensive in ignorance with those doing it with malice would be wrong.
But it doesn't seem like many people would ever think that term was offensive in the first place.
A brief internet search seems to indicate that there is a retrospective effort now to prove it is, with very little prima facie evidence of its roots in slavery. Suggesting nits were prevalent in slave ships and grits are what poor people in the South eat, hence nitty-gritty came from the slave trade is thin gruel indeed. That nigritique from the French transformed itself into nitty-gritty is a little more convincing, but why is there no printed record of the term contemporaneous to the slave trade itself? Why does it only first appear in the 1930s, and then not in reference to slavery?
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Don't use the word "spook" on American chat-rooms unless wearing flame-retardent clothing.
Really? I thought it meant spy over there too, as in a CIA spook. Though IIRC the show Spooks was renamed to MI-5 for the american market.
Another one to be careful of is "thug" - through usage it has become associated, in the US, with er.... pejorative, and inaccurate labelling of young black gentlemen.
I'd missed this - is it appropriate for an "expert" to block other experts?
What the hell happened to scientists challenging and arguing with each other? It’s the whole basis of science - or at least it was, before science started to become political.
Professor Sridhar is, insofar as I'm aware, an exceptional case. Overt political bias does not seem to be a feature of the epidemiological community - whether amongst those in favour of the zero Covid strategy or otherwise.
She's called the pandemic better than most. Certainly did not sign the intellectually lax and morally barren "Great Barrington Declaration". It's on the Right that political bias has destroyed scientific integrity.
In the US, until Trump, the anti-vaxxers were certainly associated mainly with the left, not right. Trump has changed that. Indeed, I wonder how many formerly avid leftie anti-vaxxers are now passionate vaxxers because of Trump
If so, it will finally allow us to ID something that up to now has remained in perfect hiding - a benefit of Trump.
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Well in ignorance people can say something very offensive, and treating people doing something offensive in ignorance with those doing it with malice would be wrong.
But it doesn't seem like many people would ever think that term was offensive in the first place.
A brief internet search seems to indicate that there is a retrospective effort now to prove it is, with very little prima facie evidence of its roots in slavery. Suggesting nits were prevalent in slave ships and grits are what poor people in the South eat, hence nitty-gritty came from the slave trade is thin gruel indeed. That nigritique from the French transformed itself into nitty-gritty is a little more convincing, but why is there no printed record of the term contemporaneous to the slave trade itself? Why does it only first appear in the 1930s.
I am calling bullshit on this one
Sounds like those ovelry convuluted stories for words which are supposedly acronyms when they are nothing of the kind, like Posh
East 62,169 London 42,015 ??? Midlands 84,163 NE & Yorks 62,618 North-West 60,255 South East 63,109 South West 49,197
Not surprised that the Midlands has the highest numbers. I've heard from multiple sources that things are pretty well organised there.
Though the combined East and West Midlands is presumably also the most populous of these counting areas?
Glad to see improved numbers from the East of England. Hopefully this indicates that we've finished our tyre change and are speeding back out of the pit lane.
Lord alone knows what's going on with London.
Is there a smaller proportion of oldies in London?
My instinct is that Londoners would be only marginally younger than the rest of the country on average, and that this certainly wouldn't be enough to account for the substantial deficit in vaccinations. London's population is almost half as big again as that of the East of England, for example, but its jab numbers are substantially lower.
If one had to hazard a guess as to a primary cause it would most likely be uneven distribution of vaccine doses (I believe that Sadiq Khan has been complaining of this, and he may well be right.) The East was also a laggard, but this has now ceased. It's hard to believe that this is down to GP surgeries in Norwich being somehow worse at jabbing oldies than those in Newcastle, and then magically improving all of a sudden about two days ago.
We should easily get to 500k on weekdays next week, even with slightly less supply than expected.
Sterling job by the NHS, DoH and PHE.
Yes, great job!
At what point is supply likely to limit the daily or weekly rate, does anyone have a feel for that?
My understanding is that we are supply limited from here on out, unless we get to seriously mad number of vaccinations per days - multiple millions.
It seems (as far as I can tell) to have been the policy to ensure that the capability to deliver the vaccine to the public is greater than any possible supply. This seems to have been deliberate policy - so that any vaccine that we have, goes out immediately.
Politically wise. Imagine if it turned out the Government was sat on 7 days of supplies...
They will be "sat on x days of supplies" - the supply chain for the vaccine is not just-in-time. At any one time there will be
- Vaccine in storage. - Vaccine at the bottling facility - Vaccine in the final checks - Vaccine in the fridge at the local distribution centres.
etc etc...
Look for a stupid newspaper story at some point, in addition to the ones we already had on the final checks.
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Don't use the word "spook" on American chat-rooms unless wearing flame-retardent clothing.
Really? I thought it meant spy over there too, as in a CIA spook. Though IIRC the show Spooks was renamed to MI-5 for the american market.
Another one to be careful of is "thug" - through usage it has become associated, in the US, with er.... pejorative, and inaccurate labelling of young black gentlemen.
Wasn't that originally a somewhat 'eccentric' quasi religious group in India? Although I suppose that's just as bad!
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Don't use the word "spook" on American chat-rooms unless wearing flame-retardent clothing.
Really? I thought it meant spy over there too, as in a CIA spook. Though IIRC the show Spooks was renamed to MI-5 for the american market.
Another one to be careful of is "thug" - through usage it has become associated, in the US, with er.... pejorative, and inaccurate labelling of young black gentlemen.
Wasn't originally a somewhat 'eccentric' quasi religious group in India? Although I suppose that's just as bad!
I think it was a bit of a stretch when people tried to stretch that one into an outrage earlier this year. Pretty sure people use it race blindly and don't mean they think people are in a religious cult from India.
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Don't use the word "spook" on American chat-rooms unless wearing flame-retardent clothing.
Really? I thought it meant spy over there too, as in a CIA spook. Though IIRC the show Spooks was renamed to MI-5 for the american market.
Another one to be careful of is "thug" - through usage it has become associated, in the US, with er.... pejorative, and inaccurate labelling of young black gentlemen.
Wasn't originally a somewhat 'eccentric' quasi religious group in India? Although I suppose that's just as bad!
There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.
If you want to be really, really incendiary, point out the similarity in methodology between that and other kinds of denial.
It matches, for example the ongoing thing of claiming the Aztecs weren't really into the human sacrifice thing. Much.
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Don't use the word "spook" on American chat-rooms unless wearing flame-retardent clothing.
Really? I thought it meant spy over there too, as in a CIA spook. Though IIRC the show Spooks was renamed to MI-5 for the american market.
Another one to be careful of is "thug" - through usage it has become associated, in the US, with er.... pejorative, and inaccurate labelling of young black gentlemen.
Wasn't that originally a somewhat 'eccentric' quasi religious group in India? Although I suppose that's just as bad!
Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist.
East 62,169 London 42,015 ??? Midlands 84,163 NE & Yorks 62,618 North-West 60,255 South East 63,109 South West 49,197
Not surprised that the Midlands has the highest numbers. I've heard from multiple sources that things are pretty well organised there.
Though the combined East and West Midlands is presumably also the most populous of these counting areas?
Glad to see improved numbers from the East of England. Hopefully this indicates that we've finished our tyre change and are speeding back out of the pit lane.
Lord alone knows what's going on with London.
Is there a smaller proportion of oldies in London?
My instinct is that Londoners would be only marginally younger than the rest of the country on average, and that this certainly wouldn't be enough to account for the substantial deficit in vaccinations. London's population is almost half as big again as that of the East of England, for example, but its jab numbers are substantially lower.
If one had to hazard a guess as to a primary cause it would most likely be uneven distribution of vaccine doses (I believe that Sadiq Khan has been complaining of this, and he may well be right.) The East was also a laggard, but this has now ceased. It's hard to believe that this is down to GP surgeries in Norwich being somehow worse at jabbing oldies than those in Newcastle, and then magically improving all of a sudden about two days ago.
When considering sudden accelerations, in various areas - remember that in the past week, a number of non-GP centres for vaccination have come on line. And more are coming online all the time.
TBH, I had no idea that anyone associated that term with racism. Can you be racist for using a term that you had no idea was racist?
Don't use the word "spook" on American chat-rooms unless wearing flame-retardent clothing.
Really? I thought it meant spy over there too, as in a CIA spook. Though IIRC the show Spooks was renamed to MI-5 for the american market.
Another one to be careful of is "thug" - through usage it has become associated, in the US, with er.... pejorative, and inaccurate labelling of young black gentlemen.
Wasn't originally a somewhat 'eccentric' quasi religious group in India? Although I suppose that's just as bad!
There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.
If you want to be really, really incendiary, point out the similarity in methodology between that and other kinds of denial.
It matches, for example the ongoing thing of claiming the Aztecs weren't really into the human sacrifice thing. Much.
If they were thought to be so nice what explanation do people have for why so many native forces helped Cortez take them down?
Though I can see the reasoning - moderation is key, whether it's consuming cakes or performing human sacrifices. You don't want to go nuts about it, but some amount is ok.
I presume Putin has a backup plan to the massive palace he has had built on the black sea. I seem to remember the nominal owner of that billion dollar place is based in Cyprus, I wonder if old Vlad has got himself a nice pad their too.
F E Smith's quote that "It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners," could be applied to Labour and Tory politicians in Wales.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
I used the term "nitty gritty" in a post yesterday as it happens. A post about the public finances.
I am going to complain to the owners of this website....
Too late. You were on here yesterday and read it without a murmur. Complicit.
That is part of why some people get so angry of course - because they contributed to the terribleness, but are now alive to its true nature. Anger of the converted.
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Apparently the nitty gritty thing, it was one sodding person complaining....and got escalated all the way up the chain, because this person wouldn't accept that there wasn't an issue here.
Yep. Non story like so many of these things. It's become my default setting when I see them. I know if I dived into the detail it would turn out to be much ado about nothing so I save myself the time and just assume that.
Many thanks. An awful lot of what we "know" about WWI comes down to Alan Clark's book, The Donkeys. Reading Castastrophe, by Max Hastings, dispelled a lot of the wrong ideas I had about WWI.
Few scholars would take The Donkeys seriously, but OTOH, I do think his Barbarossa has really stood the test of time. It lacked the benefit of much in the way of Russian primary sources, (it was written in the 1960's) and has some odd gaps (little about the Siege of Leningrad, and only two chapters covering the year after Kursk) but I think his judgements about the 1941-43 period are very sound.
He is unsparing in his criticisms of the German High Command, and implicates them (and not just the SS) in atrocities, and offers justified praise for the fighting qualities of the Red Army, all of which would have gone against the grain of popular history in the 1960's.
Highest to date and up 18% (total) and 19% (first) vs yesterday.
For my education, are those the figures for Saturday, or the figures reported on Saturday (i.e. primarily Friday's numbers?) Seems very prompt (what my nephews used to call 'very previous') if FOR Saturday.
Therein lies a tale. The release itself says "8th December 2020 to 22nd January 2021". However, we (some of us) reckon that because of reporting delays, it really covers data further into the past.
This theory matches the pattern of daily numbers seen so far. Given that GPs etc close on weekends, you'd expect a weekend dip. Yet the dip seen is out of phase with the weekend -
"380,667 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 5,188 have received the second dose in the period from 8 December up to 8:30 am on Friday 22 January"
So essentially it's the data from Thursday, confirming your theory. Yesterday's report said 358k, so it's 22k for the day, whereas previous days were around 25k.
I'm reading the Battle of Singapore at present, which is a campaign that's always fascinated me, particularly as we outnumbered the Japanese so significantly.
At the end of the day Malaya was bottom of the list for men and materials, as we were fighting for survival in Europe, so it got green troops and no tanks, modern fighter or bomber aircraft, or aircraft carriers, few ships, and had to make do with men, armoured cars, field artillery and anti-tank rifles. And a handful of obsolescent aircraft.
It could never have held out forever given that but the reason it fell in 2 months (rather than 5-6 months, with at least the prospect of a stalemate) is due to immense racial prejudice against the Japanese, myth-making about "Fortress Singapore", which was just wishful thinking, and poor officers.
The psychology of Percival as a commander is interesting. He's not quite as atrocious as I always thought he was. He was good on paper and had a fair military brain. But, he didn't have the assertiveness or strength of character to push back against the Governor (and some of his unit commanders) who pushed him around nor the inner confidence to revisit his assumptions when they were disproved by reality, and thus fell prey to confirmation bias.
The chief example is that he (correctly, in my view) determined that the Japanese could only be defeated by mobile infiltration and flanking tactics in the field. However, he concluded from that that building fixed defences would therefore be bad for morale, as the troops would just cower behind them, and it would involve admitting just how vulnerable Singapore really was. In reality, this is why they couldn't rest or hold the Japanese (as they had nowhere to do it) and why British Empire troops became exhausted and increasingly ineffective.
He'd have made a good staff officer, but very senior command is far more about character. It's like the difference between a good psephological statistician and a successful gambler.
Thanks - interesting. The ability to recognise that one's a good staff officer rather than a good leader is really rare - nearly everyone wants to get to the top, and then not infrequently regrets it. I've come to see in civilian management that I'm a good, reliable chief of staff but not really a creative leader, but it took a long while before I decided that that's actually OK, and it's better to do a less senior job well than to struggle at the top. Perhaps something to be imparted gently in career advice. just to keep in mind as one discovers one's limits.
In the Army, of course, it's a gross failure at the top if they don't recognise it for you and lose a war because of routine promotion. Does it give Percival's background and how he came to get that role?
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
It doesn't sound like any form of serious scholarship.
As said upthread, it resembles other forms of atrocity denial.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
The other day the South West region was trailing in the numbers quite a lot. Today it's higher than London but still not doing well. Does anyone know why that might be?
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Agreed; I find it difficult to believe they did not exist, any more than the Mafia did not. The first time I came across a reference to the latter was a fairly complimentary article in, IIRC, the Readers Digest, about a Mafia 'chief', Salvatore Giuliano, who was a vaguely pro-American mafioso at the end of WWII, and had some ideas about an independent Sicily. God alone knows what that would have been like!
Highest to date and up 18% (total) and 19% (first) vs yesterday.
For my education, are those the figures for Saturday, or the figures reported on Saturday (i.e. primarily Friday's numbers?) Seems very prompt (what my nephews used to call 'very previous') if FOR Saturday.
Therein lies a tale. The release itself says "8th December 2020 to 22nd January 2021". However, we (some of us) reckon that because of reporting delays, it really covers data further into the past.
This theory matches the pattern of daily numbers seen so far. Given that GPs etc close on weekends, you'd expect a weekend dip. Yet the dip seen is out of phase with the weekend -
"380,667 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 5,188 have received the second dose in the period from 8 December up to 8:30 am on Friday 22 January"
So essentially it's the data from Thursday, confirming your theory. Yesterday's report said 358k, so it's 22k for the day, whereas previous days were around 25k.
"Given that GPs etc close on weekends"
my GP is doing flu jabs at weekends. and only weekends. no sign of moving to covid vaccine though.
I'm reading the Battle of Singapore at present, which is a campaign that's always fascinated me, particularly as we outnumbered the Japanese so significantly.
It could never have held out forever given that but the reason it fell in 2 months (rather than 5-6 months, with at least the prospect of a stalemate) is due to immense racial prejudice against the Japanese, myth-making about "Fortress Singapore", which was just wishful thinking, and poor officers.
The psychology of Percival as a commander is interesting. He's not quite as atrocious as I always thought he was. He was good on paper and had a fair military brain. But, he didn't have the assertiveness or strength of character to push back against the Governor (and some of his unit commanders) who pushed him around nor the inner confidence to revisit his assumptions when they were disproved by reality, and thus fell prey to confirmation bias.
The chief example is that he (correctly, in my view) determined that the Japanese could only be defeated by mobile infiltration and flanking tactics in the field. However, he concluded from that that building fixed defences would therefore be bad for morale, as the troops would just cower behind them, and it would involve admitting just how vulnerable Singapore really was. In reality, this is why they couldn't rest or hold the Japanese (as they had nowhere to do it) and why British Empire troops became exhausted and increasingly ineffective.
He'd have made a good staff officer, but very senior command is far more about character. It's like the difference between a good psephological statistician and a successful gambler.
Thanks - interesting. The ability to recognise that one's a good staff officer rather than a good leader is really rare - nearly everyone wants to get to the top, and then not infrequently regrets it. I've come to see in civilian management that I'm a good, reliable chief of staff but not really a creative leader, but it took a long while before I decided that that's actually OK, and it's better to do a less senior job well than to struggle at the top. Perhaps something to be imparted gently in career advice. just to keep in mind as one discovers one's limits.
In the Army, of course, it's a gross failure at the top if they don't recognise it for you and lose a war because of routine promotion. Does it give Percival's background and how he came to get that role?
Moltke the Elder took the view that a good commander is intelligent but lazy, and thus, willing to delegate, whereas a good staff officer is intelligent and hard-working.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Agreed; I find it difficult to believe they did not exist, any more than the Mafia did not. The first time I came across a reference to the latter was a fairly complimentary article in, IIRC, the Readers Digest, about a Mafia 'chief', Salvatore Giuliano, who was a vaguely pro-American mafioso at the end of WWII, and had some ideas about an independent Sicily. God alone knows what that would have been like!
In fact there was a pretty successful effort, right up to the mid 80's, to claim that the US Mafia did not exist, and that claims that it did were founded on racial prejudice against Italians. A succession of high-profile trials blew that argument apart.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Yes, that's local news for you. But still, its stupid having a mass vaccination centre close for an afternoon of gee-gees.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
It's probably pretty optimal for annoyance and inconvenience to humans- too fatal to shrug off, not so fatal as to make society collapse.
I'm reading the Battle of Singapore at present, which is a campaign that's always fascinated me, particularly as we outnumbered the Japanese so significantly.
At the end of the day Malaya was bottom of the list for men and materials, as we were fighting for survival in Europe, so it got green troops and no tanks, modern fighter or bomber aircraft, or aircraft carriers, few ships, and had to make do with men, armoured cars, field artillery and anti-tank rifles. And a handful of obsolescent aircraft.
It could never have held out forever given that but the reason it fell in 2 months (rather than 5-6 months, with at least the prospect of a stalemate) is due to immense racial prejudice against the Japanese, myth-making about "Fortress Singapore", which was just wishful thinking, and poor officers.
The psychology of Percival as a commander is interesting. He's not quite as atrocious as I always thought he was. He was good on paper and had a fair military brain. But, he didn't have the assertiveness or strength of character to push back against the Governor (and some of his unit commanders) who pushed him around nor the inner confidence to revisit his assumptions when they were disproved by reality, and thus fell prey to confirmation bias.
The chief example is that he (correctly, in my view) determined that the Japanese could only be defeated by mobile infiltration and flanking tactics in the field. However, he concluded from that that building fixed defences would therefore be bad for morale, as the troops would just cower behind them, and it would involve admitting just how vulnerable Singapore really was. In reality, this is why they couldn't rest or hold the Japanese (as they had nowhere to do it) and why British Empire troops became exhausted and increasingly ineffective.
He'd have made a good staff officer, but very senior command is far more about character. It's like the difference between a good psephological statistician and a successful gambler.
Thanks - interesting. The ability to recognise that one's a good staff officer rather than a good leader is really rare - nearly everyone wants to get to the top, and then not infrequently regrets it. I've come to see in civilian management that I'm a good, reliable chief of staff but not really a creative leader, but it took a long while before I decided that that's actually OK, and it's better to do a less senior job well than to struggle at the top. Perhaps something to be imparted gently in career advice. just to keep in mind as one discovers one's limits.
In the Army, of course, it's a gross failure at the top if they don't recognise it for you and lose a war because of routine promotion. Does it give Percival's background and how he came to get that role?
One of the odder ';facts' about the Fall of Singapore that I've come across was that the Japanese had an observation post of the top of the Sultan of Johore's palace, not far from the causeway. The Australian gun battery within range demanded to be allowed to shell the palace but were denied permission, because it was the Sultans.
Doubt it would have made much difference, of course.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Sorry, can't let you wriggle free on this one. Evolution and design have no overlap. In the laboratory, we can use directed evolution to select top performers against design parameters, rather than having to design them. But it is still not design.
Intent is implicit in design. There is absolutely no intent in evolution.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
It's probably pretty optimal for annoyance and inconvenience to humans- too fatal to shrug off, not so fatal as to make society collapse.
And with the asymptotic infectious period, just to make sure it spreads around.
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Agreed; I find it difficult to believe they did not exist, any more than the Mafia did not. The first time I came across a reference to the latter was a fairly complimentary article in, IIRC, the Readers Digest, about a Mafia 'chief', Salvatore Giuliano, who was a vaguely pro-American mafioso at the end of WWII, and had some ideas about an independent Sicily. God alone knows what that would have been like!
Maybe written by Gavin Maxwell? The otter chap. He wrote a book about Guiliano if memory serves. God protect me from my friends, was the title I think.
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Agreed; I find it difficult to believe they did not exist, any more than the Mafia did not. The first time I came across a reference to the latter was a fairly complimentary article in, IIRC, the Readers Digest, about a Mafia 'chief', Salvatore Giuliano, who was a vaguely pro-American mafioso at the end of WWII, and had some ideas about an independent Sicily. God alone knows what that would have been like!
In fact there was a pretty successful effort, right up to the mid 80's, to claim that the US Mafia did not exist, and that claims that it did were founded on racial prejudice against Italians. A succession of high-profile trials blew that argument apart.
In some ways they were right - the idea of a monolithic, completely secret Crime Syndicate operating unknown to the authorities was nonsense. They all spent their time in and out of prison, and their various crimes were well known. The Mafia was more a set of guidelines for really rather disorganised crime groups.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
It's probably pretty optimal for annoyance and inconvenience to humans- too fatal to shrug off, not so fatal as to make society collapse.
And with the asymptotic infectious period, just to make sure it spreads around.
Even with symptomatic patients, 40%+ of their transmission is pre-symptomatic. Definitely a nasty bug, but fortunately not up there with the Black Death.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Sorry, can't let you wriggle free on this one. Evolution and design have no overlap. In the laboratory, we can use directed evolution to select top performers against design parameters, rather than having to design them. But it is still not design.
Intent is implicit in design. There is absolutely no intent in evolution.
Mr Malmesbury posted that 'There is a dedicated effort by some in to claim that Thuggee didn't exist, didn't kill very many people, that it was all made up etc.'
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
If they were resistance fighters, they seemed not be interested in killing white people....
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Agreed; I find it difficult to believe they did not exist, any more than the Mafia did not. The first time I came across a reference to the latter was a fairly complimentary article in, IIRC, the Readers Digest, about a Mafia 'chief', Salvatore Giuliano, who was a vaguely pro-American mafioso at the end of WWII, and had some ideas about an independent Sicily. God alone knows what that would have been like!
Some would say - go to Naples. It is run (pretty much) by (dis)organised crime...
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Yes, that's local news for you. But still, its stupid having a mass vaccination centre close for an afternoon of gee-gees.
10-1 that the Racecourse was booked as a vaccination centre for use on the days when it isn't being used for racing. i.e. this was the plan all along.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Yes, that's local news for you. But still, its stupid having a mass vaccination centre close for an afternoon of gee-gees.
10-1 that the Racecourse was booked as a vaccination centre for use on the days when it isn't being used for racing. i.e. this was the plan all along.
The report says that is the case, but still. It seems a bit stupid.
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
Highest to date and up 18% (total) and 19% (first) vs yesterday.
For my education, are those the figures for Saturday, or the figures reported on Saturday (i.e. primarily Friday's numbers?) Seems very prompt (what my nephews used to call 'very previous') if FOR Saturday.
Therein lies a tale. The release itself says "8th December 2020 to 22nd January 2021". However, we (some of us) reckon that because of reporting delays, it really covers data further into the past.
This theory matches the pattern of daily numbers seen so far. Given that GPs etc close on weekends, you'd expect a weekend dip. Yet the dip seen is out of phase with the weekend -
"380,667 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 5,188 have received the second dose in the period from 8 December up to 8:30 am on Friday 22 January"
So essentially it's the data from Thursday, confirming your theory. Yesterday's report said 358k, so it's 22k for the day, whereas previous days were around 25k.
"Given that GPs etc close on weekends"
my GP is doing flu jabs at weekends. and only weekends. no sign of moving to covid vaccine though.
Sorry - what I meant was "many/most GPs close now on weekends"
Since the famous contract change a while back, many GPs provide only Monday-Friday coverage.
One year ago today, I developed a high temperature which came on in about an hour. Spent the next two days in bed with a hacking, dry cough. Recovered to spend day 3 and 4 as pretty normal if weary. Came back on day 5 and went downhill for the next week. Completely lost all taste and smell. Worst cold I'd ever had. Yes. I'd had what was known locally as the "boomerang cold". Put 4 people I knew in hospital with pneumonia...
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
I don't think it is in doubt that the government is taking a calculated risk.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Yes, that's local news for you. But still, its stupid having a mass vaccination centre close for an afternoon of gee-gees.
10-1 that the Racecourse was booked as a vaccination centre for use on the days when it isn't being used for racing. i.e. this was the plan all along.
The report says that is the case, but still. It seems a bit stupid.
It would be stupid, if there was a queue of people wait for their shot, because there were piles of vaccine, but no space to give it to them.
All the reports I have come across suggest that we have a surplus of vaccination capacity, but a restricted supply (relatively) of vaccine.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Bad enough to cause havoc around the world, but not so extreme that it prevents the contrarians and the selfish from spreading it.
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
I think it is fair to say there is not only no consensus, there is insufficient data out there around which to form definitive views.
The phase 3 trials only tested one or a couple of delivery scenarios. So we simply don't have COVID-19-specific data on the other scenarios. However, from other vaccines, including SARS, we do know that other delivery schedules can produce stronger immune responses than the 3-weeks tested. Will that necessarily transfer from SARS to SARS-CoV-2? We don't know, but it is a reasonable supposition given how closely related the two viruses are.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Yes, that's local news for you. But still, its stupid having a mass vaccination centre close for an afternoon of gee-gees.
10-1 that the Racecourse was booked as a vaccination centre for use on the days when it isn't being used for racing. i.e. this was the plan all along.
The report says that is the case, but still. It seems a bit stupid.
It would be stupid, if there was a queue of people wait for their shot, because there were piles of vaccine, but no space to give it to them.
All the reports I have come across suggest that we have a surplus of vaccination capacity, but a restricted supply (relatively) of vaccine.
I am sure that is the case, but I bet we see lower numbers associated with the weekend again. With this programme there shouldn't be any weekend effect built-in, it should be max numbers every day based on supply, but it seems like there is a certain element of reduction in jabbing on Saturday and Sundays.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Sorry, can't let you wriggle free on this one. Evolution and design have no overlap. In the laboratory, we can use directed evolution to select top performers against design parameters, rather than having to design them. But it is still not design.
Intent is implicit in design. There is absolutely no intent in evolution.
Perhaps I can phrase my underlying question thus.
Suppose an evil biotechnologist wanted to improve on COVID & make it more destructive?
What would the e.b. do to make it worse?
I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is not obvious to me that this virus was not engineered.
Sure, it could have come naturally from bats & that is perhaps a much more likely explanation. But, an escape from a lab does not look to me that it can be immediately ruled out. It is certainly a curious coincidence that Wuhan houses an Institute of Virology.
After all, we do know viruses can & do escape from labs (Birmingham smallpox).
Do the voters of the respective parties have much in common. I should think Green voters are well to the left of Lib Dem voters.
The Greens in Germany have become progressively more centrist as their support base has grown.
The Greens in Germany are, however, a mainstream party of government in many Lander. The are in charge in Baden Wurtemberg. They also have a party to the left of them, Die Linke in the Reichstag. Which the Marxists can choose. Neither applies here as of yet.
Husband tells me that the total number of first doses now administered in the whole UK is "5.4 million plus change." This unit may henceforth be referred to as a Scotland.
When we get to about three Scotlands then priority cohorts 1 through 4 should all have had their first jabs. It seems to be going well so far, better than I'd have predicted when we got started before Christmas.
The rest of JCVI phase one entails approximately three more Scotlands on top of that. So, that's the first major target. Six Scotlands = end of total lockdown, assuming no vaccine resistance disasters occur. But I still think we've got to wait until all ten Scotlands (i.e. the entire adult population) have been lanced at least once before we return to something even vaguely resembling normality. So, much work to be done.
The government said they wanted 500k / day by the end of this week. They are going to be just short, but fantastic effort by all concerned. But no surrender....got to keep pushing. We really shouldn't be doing this nonsense though...
Somerset’s only Covid-19 vaccination centre to close this Saturday for horse racing
Some nags racing really isn't important at the moment.
Terribly misleading headline. Taunton Racecourse might be Somerset’s only mass Covid-19 vaccination centre, but it's certainly not the only vaccination centre in the county.
Yes, that's local news for you. But still, its stupid having a mass vaccination centre close for an afternoon of gee-gees.
10-1 that the Racecourse was booked as a vaccination centre for use on the days when it isn't being used for racing. i.e. this was the plan all along.
The report says that is the case, but still. It seems a bit stupid.
It would be stupid, if there was a queue of people wait for their shot, because there were piles of vaccine, but no space to give it to them.
All the reports I have come across suggest that we have a surplus of vaccination capacity, but a restricted supply (relatively) of vaccine.
I am sure that is the case, but I bet we see lower numbers associated with the weekend again. With this programme there shouldn't be any weekend effect built-in, it should be max numbers every day based on supply, but it seems like there is a certain element of reduction in jabbing on Saturday and Sundays.
In the long run, working a system 7 days a week, let alone 24/7, has a number of effects.
There is a reason that many operations gravitate to the working week cycle - it gives humans and systems time for rest, repair and re-stock.
If you can deliver all the vaccine available in 5 days a week, with a lower key operation on Saturday and Sunday - why not?
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Sorry, can't let you wriggle free on this one. Evolution and design have no overlap. In the laboratory, we can use directed evolution to select top performers against design parameters, rather than having to design them. But it is still not design.
Intent is implicit in design. There is absolutely no intent in evolution.
Perhaps I can phrase my underlying question thus.
Suppose an evil biotechnologist wanted to improve on COVID & make it more destructive?
What would the e.b. do to make it worse?
I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is not obvious to me that this virus was not engineered.
Sure, it could have come naturally from bats & that is perhaps a much more likely explanation. But, an escape from a lab does not look to me it can be immediately ruled out. It is certainly a curious coincidence that Wuhan houses an Institute of Virology.
After all, we do know viruses can & do escape from labs (Birmingham smallpox).
If I went through my files from February 2020, I could find two scientific articles that explain in great detail with scientific justification why this is not a designed virus. I have friends in Wuhan right now in the WHO investigation, so I am reasonably well-informed on this matter.
I do not rule out that it was not designed, but still originated in that lab. Indeed, I have created a training scenario for biorisk management on precisely that scenario - a lab collecting massive numbers of wild-type viruses to assess which are the closest to making the zoonotic jump from animals to humans, propagating those viruses on human epithelial cell lines, and by the act of doing that, unwittingly accelerating the evolution of the virus to a strain that makes the jump. And then, because the original virus was considered a non-human virus and thus has low level biosafety measures in place, the new strain infects the lab workers who, unaware, spread it to family and friends etc...
One year ago today, I developed a high temperature which came on in about an hour. Spent the next two days in bed with a hacking, dry cough. Recovered to spend day 3 and 4 as pretty normal if weary. Came back on day 5 and went downhill for the next week. Completely lost all taste and smell. Worst cold I'd ever had. Yes. I'd had what was known locally as the "boomerang cold". Put 4 people I knew in hospital with pneumonia...
And by pure coincidence, had one of your neighbours just returned from a work trip to China?
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
I would certainly be suspicious of political shenanigans being played by members of the BMA.
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
I don't think it is in doubt that the government is taking a calculated risk.
I wonder which poster is holding a mass of tweets in reserve and ready to paste should the strategy fail.
Larry King being second story on the BBC news site is more evidence for the contention that Auntie blindly follows American news channels, especially at weekends.
12 months ago I was attending a talk by Sir David Spiegelhalter and in the Q&A afterwards he merrily pointed out how estimates of deaths from previous outbreaks like BSE/swine flu/bird flu etc. were order of magnitude greater than what had occured and therefore not to worry our heads about this outbreak of flu in China.
Ha ... I have a high opinion of David Spiegelhalter, and of course his history is correct (tbf, he is a professional statistician not an epidemiologist).
COVID is an exceptionally well-designed virus ... it has wrought more havoc than anyone could have ever imagined.
Except COVID is not designed at all, it is evolved.
It has been designed by evolution
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
Sorry, can't let you wriggle free on this one. Evolution and design have no overlap. In the laboratory, we can use directed evolution to select top performers against design parameters, rather than having to design them. But it is still not design.
Intent is implicit in design. There is absolutely no intent in evolution.
Perhaps I can phrase my underlying question thus.
Suppose an evil biotechnologist wanted to improve on COVID & make it more destructive?
What would the e.b. do to make it worse?
I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is not obvious to me that this virus was not engineered.
Sure, it could have come naturally from bats & that is perhaps a much more likely explanation. But, an escape from a lab does not look to me that it can be immediately ruled out. It is certainly a curious coincidence that Wuhan houses an Institute of Virology.
After all, we do know viruses can & do escape from labs (Birmingham smallpox).
If it has escaped from there, it doesn't necessarily mean it was developed there. Could just be one they had collected from the wild. It could even have been from an animal they'd only just brought in, without actually knowing about the virus.
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
I don't think it is in doubt that the government is taking a calculated risk.
Larry King being second story on the BBC news site is more evidence for the contention that Auntie blindly follows American news channels, especially at weekends.
Quite - he's only been on RT recently so while his passing is sad it doesn't merit 2nd on the nation's premier news channel.
East 62,169 London 42,015 ??? Midlands 84,163 NE & Yorks 62,618 North-West 60,255 South East 63,109 South West 49,197
Not surprised that the Midlands has the highest numbers. I've heard from multiple sources that things are pretty well organised there.
Though the combined East and West Midlands is presumably also the most populous of these counting areas?
Glad to see improved numbers from the East of England. Hopefully this indicates that we've finished our tyre change and are speeding back out of the pit lane.
Lord alone knows what's going on with London.
Is there a smaller proportion of oldies in London?
Probably. Many couples living in Greater London retire, sell the house and move somewhere cheaper with a more relaxed pace of life.
Clearly someone was smashing the windows. However quite convenient it happened right in front of a far-right journo.
Oh f##k off. There is 100s of hours of footage of black clad far leftist smashing up Portland and Seattle, intimidating elected officials at their homes, for months on end. It isn't some far right fake news QAnon conspiracy. Even the dripping wet Mayor of Portland has finally acknowledged they have a problem with this crowd.
There have always been far left & right groups that are prone to violence. The difference surely is that the Democratic Party and Biden don't support the far-leftists whereas the GOP and Trump clearly do.
Comments
This theory matches the pattern of daily numbers seen so far. Given that GPs etc close on weekends, you'd expect a weekend dip. Yet the dip seen is out of phase with the weekend -
I am calling bullshit on this one
So some of the alt-right types took to using it as a snearing trigger word. Effectively, they claimed it for the racists....
It'll be the Mail on Sunday tomorrow.
If one had to hazard a guess as to a primary cause it would most likely be uneven distribution of vaccine doses (I believe that Sadiq Khan has been complaining of this, and he may well be right.) The East was also a laggard, but this has now ceased. It's hard to believe that this is down to GP surgeries in Norwich being somehow worse at jabbing oldies than those in Newcastle, and then magically improving all of a sudden about two days ago.
- Vaccine in storage.
- Vaccine at the bottling facility
- Vaccine in the final checks
- Vaccine in the fridge at the local distribution centres.
etc etc...
Look for a stupid newspaper story at some point, in addition to the ones we already had on the final checks.
https://twitter.com/akkitwts/status/1352951512247447554?s=20
Although I suppose that's just as bad!
If you want to be really, really incendiary, point out the similarity in methodology between that and other kinds of denial.
It matches, for example the ongoing thing of claiming the Aztecs weren't really into the human sacrifice thing. Much.
So the GP issue will be becoming less important.
Though I can see the reasoning - moderation is key, whether it's consuming cakes or performing human sacrifices. You don't want to go nuts about it, but some amount is ok.
I used the word mischievously ... because if you were going to design a killer vaccine, you might well have come up with something quite like COVID
A minute or so late Mr T posted 'Mr Cole, I am sad to say that your history is lagging latest scholarly interpretation. The Thugs were invented by the colonialist Brits as a means of suppression. They did not exist."
Could they 'in fact' have been brave resistance fighters, opposed to the exploitative East India Company, of London?
There were documented trials. And documented instances of catching people in the act of murdering their victims. And documented instance of confessions, that led to buried bodies. Which were identified by relatives.
The most likely thing is that it was like the Mafia in America - a lot less organised than the stories would have you believe. The Mafia myth from the Godfather etc was never true. It was more a way of doing crime - loose gangs with some rules (generally broken at the drop of hat) about dealing with other, similar gangs.
Few scholars would take The Donkeys seriously, but OTOH, I do think his Barbarossa has really stood the test of time. It lacked the benefit of much in the way of Russian primary sources, (it was written in the 1960's) and has some odd gaps (little about the Siege of Leningrad, and only two chapters covering the year after Kursk) but I think his judgements about the 1941-43 period are very sound.
He is unsparing in his criticisms of the German High Command, and implicates them (and not just the SS) in atrocities, and offers justified praise for the fighting qualities of the Red Army, all of which would have gone against the grain of popular history in the 1960's.
"380,667 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 5,188 have received the second dose in the period from 8 December up to 8:30 am on Friday 22 January"
So essentially it's the data from Thursday, confirming your theory. Yesterday's report said 358k, so it's 22k for the day, whereas previous days were around 25k.
In the Army, of course, it's a gross failure at the top if they don't recognise it for you and lose a war because of routine promotion. Does it give Percival's background and how he came to get that role?
As said upthread, it resembles other forms of atrocity denial.
Good afternoon, everybody.
We could be halfway to the Valentine’s target at some stage next week.
And the results from Israel looking good.
Onwards and upwards!
God alone knows what that would have been like!
my GP is doing flu jabs at weekends. and only weekends. no sign of moving to covid vaccine though.
Doubt it would have made much difference, of course.
Intent is implicit in design. There is absolutely no intent in evolution.
i.e. this was the plan all along.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55777084
It seems to me, scientifically there doesn’t seem clear consensus. Would it be fair to say it wouldn’t be followed anyway, because such political promise is tied into vaccination targets?
Since the famous contract change a while back, many GPs provide only Monday-Friday coverage.
Yes. I'd had what was known locally as the "boomerang cold". Put 4 people I knew in hospital with pneumonia...
All the reports I have come across suggest that we have a surplus of vaccination capacity, but a restricted supply (relatively) of vaccine.
The phase 3 trials only tested one or a couple of delivery scenarios. So we simply don't have COVID-19-specific data on the other scenarios. However, from other vaccines, including SARS, we do know that other delivery schedules can produce stronger immune responses than the 3-weeks tested. Will that necessarily transfer from SARS to SARS-CoV-2? We don't know, but it is a reasonable supposition given how closely related the two viruses are.
Suppose an evil biotechnologist wanted to improve on COVID & make it more destructive?
What would the e.b. do to make it worse?
I am not one for conspiracy theories, but it is not obvious to me that this virus was not engineered.
Sure, it could have come naturally from bats & that is perhaps a much more likely explanation. But, an escape from a lab does not look to me that it can be immediately ruled out. It is certainly a curious coincidence that Wuhan houses an Institute of Virology.
After all, we do know viruses can & do escape from labs (Birmingham smallpox).
Neither applies here as of yet.
When we get to about three Scotlands then priority cohorts 1 through 4 should all have had their first jabs. It seems to be going well so far, better than I'd have predicted when we got started before Christmas.
The rest of JCVI phase one entails approximately three more Scotlands on top of that. So, that's the first major target. Six Scotlands = end of total lockdown, assuming no vaccine resistance disasters occur. But I still think we've got to wait until all ten Scotlands (i.e. the entire adult population) have been lanced at least once before we return to something even vaguely resembling normality. So, much work to be done.
There is a reason that many operations gravitate to the working week cycle - it gives humans and systems time for rest, repair and re-stock.
If you can deliver all the vaccine available in 5 days a week, with a lower key operation on Saturday and Sunday - why not?
I do not rule out that it was not designed, but still originated in that lab. Indeed, I have created a training scenario for biorisk management on precisely that scenario - a lab collecting massive numbers of wild-type viruses to assess which are the closest to making the zoonotic jump from animals to humans, propagating those viruses on human epithelial cell lines, and by the act of doing that, unwittingly accelerating the evolution of the virus to a strain that makes the jump. And then, because the original virus was considered a non-human virus and thus has low level biosafety measures in place, the new strain infects the lab workers who, unaware, spread it to family and friends etc...
My first reaction?
He wouldn't make a mistake like that.
There have always been far left & right groups that are prone to violence. The difference surely is that the Democratic Party and Biden don't support the far-leftists whereas the GOP and Trump clearly do.