This polling is also exactly the reason Boris will never allow a legal indyref2 while he is PM as he knows there is a strong chance Scots would vote Yes and he would be forced to resign as PM having broken up the Union.
Starmer however is much more likely to offer Sturgeon a legal indyref2, firstly he may need SNP confidence and supply to become PM after the 2024 general election while Boris has a Tory majority of 80 and can ignore the SNP. Secondly, he is much more likely to win any indyref2 than Boris given Starmer has a very good +16% rating in Scotland compared to Boris' poor -58% rating with Scots.
How will Boris prevent a re-run of the Scottish Parliament election on a Indy plebicite platform?
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
It came from German politicians at ministerial level on the same day that the EU was hinting at AZN dirty tricks over vaccines and asking them to divert supplies meant for the UK. The suggestion was sent to all 27 member states. Where have you been?
So, the EU directed German government ministers to feed a fake story to a single German newspaper, and no newspaper anywhere else in the EU, designed to discredit Astra Zeneca's vaccine at the same time as it was demanding more supplies of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Got it.
Of course not - but the coincidences have mounted up. However, it is true that the newspaper claimed the stroy came from German politicians at ministerial level. That in itself is a disgrace.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
Blimey - you've been through every Handelsblatt tweet for the past seven hours!
Good effort.
They've done about 10 tweets. It's not hard
No they haven't. I just went onto their twitter, God help me. There are dozens and dozens.
I call fake news.
You must read tweets very slowly, while mouthing the words aloud. It all makes sense
You haven't read every (any) tweet that Handelsblatt has put out over the past six hours and are making big claims predicated on precisely this ignorance.
New campaign hobby horse...Tories winning under FPTP is undemocratic, so we need to have a new system. I don't think he was very happy that other direct democratic system based on a pure majority that led to Brexit either.
I think some form of PR would be better, but when people are pretty clear it's a partisan reason that they are against the current system it makes it harder to argue as people assume anyone arguing for change is doign so for that reason.
But so many deaths: I guess we're heading for close to 150k in all (only the vaccine might keep it below).
It's a relief that the cases are coming down, though I never really subscribed to the theory that the new variant was impossible to control through lockdown.
But there will be plenty of idiots who advance the argument "lockdown is working, therefore it's vital that we end it!".
--AS
Yep - right now, hard as lock down is, we should be keeping the foot on the brake until cases are in the hundreds. Then test, track, trace and ISOLATE IN LOCKED HOTELS will actually stand a chance of working...
But so many deaths: I guess we're heading for close to 150k in all (only the vaccine might keep it below).
It's a relief that the cases are coming down, though I never really subscribed to the theory that the new variant was impossible to control through lockdown.
But there will be plenty of idiots who advance the argument "lockdown is working, therefore it's vital that we end it!".
--AS
While you're at it, take down that ridiculous umbrella, it's completely dry.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
EU good - nothing to see here. Next.
What on earth has it got to do with the EU? Are people really seeing this story in those terms? Bloody hell.
It came from German politicians at ministerial level on the same day that the EU was hinting at AZN dirty tricks over vaccines and asking them to divert supplies meant for the UK. The suggestion was sent to all 27 member states. Where have you been?
So, the EU directed German government ministers to feed a fake story to a single German newspaper, and no newspaper anywhere else in the EU, designed to discredit Astra Zeneca's vaccine at the same time as it was demanding more supplies of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Got it.
...is what we're dealing with here on PB.
The story is clearly worrying, but hardly evidence of an EU wide plot, even though other stories the same day on the EU's comments and actions will have upset.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
I tend to agree - this is annoying but not ultimately a disaster. It is more of a concern that the EU has asked for British vaccine supplies to be diverted to itself, and is threatening to block the export of vaccines. We need to do everything possible to ensure that vaccines are manufactured in the UK. Does anyone know where the J&J one is being manufactured?
Aren't UK AZN vaccines manufactured in the UK?
Mostly, but they've still asked for UK doses to be diverted.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
Blimey - you've been through every Handelsblatt tweet for the past seven hours!
Good effort.
They've done about 10 tweets. It's not hard
No they haven't. I just went onto their twitter, God help me. There are dozens and dozens.
I call fake news.
You must read tweets very slowly, while mouthing the words aloud. It all makes sense
You haven't read every (any) tweet that Handelsblatt has put out over the past six hours and are making big claims predicated on precisely this ignorance.
But of course make with the funny gags.
Actually, I'm so bored I have checked every tweet they've done. Yes yes yes it's more than ten - it's a few dozen. It took about ten minutes. But I did check. And that really is their last tweet on this subject (unless they have done a new one since my comment)
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Since there's not the slightest particle of evidence that even one additional person died as a result of that supposed scandal, the Handelsblatt Affair has every chance of prevailing.
None of this is provable in a hard scientific sense but it lends itself to insightful speculation for those with the head and stomach for it. Here we are stacking up: (i) loss of trust in government lockdown messaging due to senior government advisor pissing all over it VERSUS (ii) loss of trust in AZ vaccine due to fake news story in German newspaper. I don't have the answer. Was hoping to hear from others first. Particularly those who are talking about lives lost due to (ii).
Here is an example of why the Handelsblatt Affair is much more damaging.
The original tweets claiming "8% efficacy" were retweeted by multiple journalists, and experts, in Germany
Like this guy. Here he is explaining why he has now deleted the retweet
Why does he matter? Because he has 100,000 followers and he is:
"Professor and Director of the Institute of Virology and German Center of HIV & AIDS @UniBonn Former: @HarvardMed"
Many of his followers will automatically believe him, this is his field. They would have read this very alarming news last night, and told everyone on Facebook, and thus it now spreads around the world.
Yes, loss of trust in a government adviser and maybe the government maybe has a small effect in one country. People aren't burning cars in the Netherlands and France at the moment because if Cummings, at least. Undermining trust in the main vaccine for the developing world is completely unforgivable, the Russian bot farms will be in overdrive making "8%" memes for social media and WhatsApp that will spread through Africa and South Asia like wildfire, all of it with real quotes from a real respected German newspaper and real Tweets from respected German scientists questioning the efficacy of the vaccine.
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
I disagree. The story was killed quickly and categorically. It will have some effect. But not a disastrous one. Quotes can be made up. Tweets can be manufactured. Most people will not know a genuine German scientist from a fake one. Very few people outside of Germany will have heard of Handelsblatt. Bollocks will spread whatever.
The sensible thing is to wait until the EMA delivers its expected authorisation and conditions for the Astrazeneca vaccine on Friday. They are not going to make mistakes like this. The problem is the widespread repetition as fact of unsubstantiated and unattributed assertion. Not just a German problem, I have to say...
There is speculation that the EMA will not authorise the AZ vaccine for over 65s. If this happens, I suspect a risk of people coming to the conclusion that the vaccine is unsafe, rather than that the EMA lacks the data to support authorisation, hopefully a temporary situation until the data can be procured.
If they do not authorise it there will be a very good reason. As far as I can tell there isn't one, so they will.
Not sure. The FDA aren't authorising at all on this data. Nor the Canadian regulator.
And, although the AZ vaccine looks like it works well, they seem to have done a lousy job of collecting the data to prove this to the normal standards of convincingness. I've had people round me have it, and I'm totally chilled about that and mildly vexed at being so much further down the list. But they should have done that bit better.
New campaign hobby horse...Tories winning under FPTP is undemocratic, so we need to have a new system. I don't think he was very happy that other direct democratic system based on a pure majority that led to Brexit either.
I think some form of PR would be better, but when people are pretty clear it's a partisan reason that they are against the current system it makes it harder to argue as people assume anyone arguing for change is doign so for that reason.
I like it best when people design a system for partisan reasons and then that system turns round and bites them on the arse, a teeny bit of restorative Karma.
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
So you mean people who agree with you and your assumptions. Lets see your "core data" considering the Cummings "scandal" came while lockdown was being lifted and many months before the second wave began.
Don't be ridiculous claiming that cost lives while antivax BS doesn't. Show some "core data" to substantiate that. 🙄
It's the comparison I'm interested in. They both will have cost lives. This is undeniable to all with integrity. Definition of integrity here being people who seek to neither downplay and excuse Cummings nor downplay and excuse this. So, I can play (although I'm not) but you and ilk can't.
No they won't have both cost lives. Antivax costs lives, Cummings was a meaningless witchhunt.
In the months after the Cummings story blew up the UK had no or negative excess deaths. How many deaths do you attribute in that period to Cummings? With some "core data" please?
If the EU block export of Pfizer vaccines to UK, while demanding queue jumping of AZN ones made in the UK....that will go down well.
Don't worry, the EU will still have it's defenders in the UK, either out loud or by staying quiet.
Everyone needs to stop frothing.
The EU are not going to block export of Pfizer vaccines.
What is wrong with everyone?
So why are they putting a notification and approval process in place for exports?
We can discuss the behaviour of the EU if and when they actually do something. Otherwise everyone is just frothing about a few tweets from EU knobheads.
I know first-hand how integrated EU and UK pharma supply chains are. Britain therefore has significant leverage and any trade war would have awful consequences for both parties.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
You think that Commissioner Kyriakides is a knobhead?
A little undiplomatic but OK . . .
If the UK had been behaving with the chaotic, flailing incompetence of the EU and its media friends, in the last couple of weeks, they would have had squirting orgasms of delight.
The Handelsblatt error is just mind-bogglingly stupid, world class levels of irresponsible, and it could lead to actual deaths as people read the fake news (still being retweeted by Told You So anti-vaxxers) and avoid the jab.
How has the journalist wo wrote it still got a job? In the UK he'd now be collecting Universal Credit.
No, in the UK people who publish lies in newspapers become Prime Minister.
Whataboutery of the first water,
FFS this is a lie - sorry "journalistic error" - on a cosmic level; the 8% meme is now out there, and it will possibly cause deaths.
To make it worse, Handelsblatt were told last night be multiple experts - virologists, epidemiologists, everyone - that the "8% thing" was almost certainly wrong, damaging and dangerous, and should be immediately retracted. Did they? No. They doubled down.
It was still on their website just an hour ago.
In a spirit of genuine intellectual curiosity rather than whataboutery -
Do we think this will cost more lives than the Cummings scandal?
Obviously.
Sorry, forgot to add - the question is not to be attempted by people who lost their integrity over the Cummings scandal. To assess it properly you need (i) some core data, (ii) a set of reasonable assumptions about behaviour, (iii) a calculator, and (iv) your integrity.
I quit the Tory party over it, and this anti-vaxxer bullshit from Germany is way, way worse than Cummings. The effect on global vaccine take up in the developing world is going to be a disaster once the Russian "8%" memes start to spread all over African and Asian WhatsApp.
I suppose there is still the tiny possibility that the 8% "fact" is true; though it seems vanishingly unlikely, from all I've read about vaccines, and it has been vehemently denied by AZ, and is now denied by the German government.
It's not true, the German government has already said it was down to a misunderstanding of the report the German regulator has received from the EMA saying that 56-69 year olds only made up 8% of the trial. That's where the number comes from. It has nothing to do with efficacy.
If you are right (and I am sure you are) I do not understand why Handelsblatt themselves have not come out with a grovelling retraction. Because they haven't.
Their last tweet on this reiterated the 8% claim, and merely added that the company itself (AZ) disagreed.
Blimey - you've been through every Handelsblatt tweet for the past seven hours!
Good effort.
They've done about 10 tweets. It's not hard
No they haven't. I just went onto their twitter, God help me. There are dozens and dozens.
I call fake news.
You must read tweets very slowly, while mouthing the words aloud. It all makes sense
You haven't read every (any) tweet that Handelsblatt has put out over the past six hours and are making big claims predicated on precisely this ignorance.
But of course make with the funny gags.
Actually, I'm so bored I have checked every tweet they've done. Yes yes yes it's more than ten - it's a few dozen. It took about ten minutes. But I did check. And that really is their last tweet on this subject (unless they have done a new one since my comment)
You see how it works? You make some bollocks claim as though it was true and then normal people need verification and hence before you know it we have thoroughly dispelled your fake news as being fake news.
Everything Osborne says in that article could have been said of Gaitskell in early 1961 - and indeed of Thatcher at the end of 1975. Labour has been largely invisible over the last month - though I doubt there is much they can do about that in the context of the sharp deterioration on the Covid front. As in wartime, party politics has largely gone into abeyance for the duration. People are simply not receptive to it - other than when obvious scandals occur as with Cummings last Spring and also the Care Home deaths. Both caused the Government discomfort but overall this scenario is likely to be benefitting the Government as Opposition voices are largely frozen out.
Very noisy data, and as I've said before I don't think he should be doing a straight line fit, but arguably there is some preliminary evidence in this chart that the UK vaccination programme is beginning to save lives amongst those vaccinated earliest (the over 80s). Worth watching to see if the ratio falls significantly over the next few days:
Everything Osborne says in that article could have been said of Gaitskell in early 1961 - and indeed of Thatcher at the end of 1975. Labour has been largely invisible over the last month - though I doubt there is much they can do about that in the context of the sharp deterioration on the Covid front. As in wartime, party politics has largely gone into abeyance for the duration. People are simply not receptive to it - other than when obvious scandals occur as with Cummings last Spring and also the Care Home deaths. Both caused the Government discomfort but overall this scenario is likely to be benefitting the Government as Opposition voices are largely frozen out.
We are three and a half years out from an election. Once the dust settles a bit on the current crisis he might have more to say. But what do I care...I'm about as likely to vote Tory as Labour these days - something I would never have thought I would say pre-Corbyn.
Comments
https://twitter.com/mellziland/status/1353805375716405248
I've seen British pensioners with appointments in the next week starting to worry about which vaccine they get...
But of course make with the funny gags.
In the months after the Cummings story blew up the UK had no or negative excess deaths. How many deaths do you attribute in that period to Cummings? With some "core data" please?
Same with that German guy's tweets.
Btw it's not linear - the negative slope is steepening.. Possibly a lowess fit.
https://twitter.com/florian_krammer/status/1353900984209182720
https://twitter.com/megtirrell/status/1354041623420809217