From the US news site Oz, more social media activism/oppression, depending on your view:
The road to emoji timeout is paved with good intentions. That’s what Facebook seems to be telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by suspending his official chatbot for a week. Campaigning for widespread COVID-19 inoculation, the bot sent users messages asking them to name unvaccinated people over 60 so Netanyahu could personally persuade them. But that violates Facebook’s rule against soliciting medical information. It wasn't his first infraction, either: His chatbot was suspended before a 2019 election for messaging about “Arabs who want to destroy us all.” Netanyahu’s party defended the vaccination appeals, noting the campaign aims to save lives.
I sort of agree this use of FB is undesirable, as I certainly did about Trump's tweets, but I do think we have a problem that a very small number of social media channels are now actively censoring political leaders who say undesirable things. On the whole, I think the test should simply be "Is it legal"? - anything more than that gets us into deep water.
Germany has a selective education system, which probably doesn't help. Mind you, I wouldn't bet on the UK numbers being that much different. Innumeracy is shockingly widespread. And a lot of innumerate people seem to end up as journalists, in all countries.
It's strange the German newspaper got essentially a comprehension, not numeracy, question wrong.
There is plenty of difficult maths in establishing efficacy - plenty of potential errors it is easy to make - but confusing the % of people in a category with efficacy for that category is not one of them - if that is indeed what they did.
The only thing that really makes sense, is some sort of transcription or translation error in the document.
But you’d have thought the hack, and his head of department, and the editor, would have done a considerable amount of checking before splashing the story on their front page!
I don't think they even had the data, they just had the word of a politician who had been told about the data.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on final point of departure to UK - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Does the UK have J&J doses? How many and on what timescale?
30m initial order, priority delivery timescale (starting in April), 22m option for H2 delivery.
*EU eyes look on, enviously....*
The generous, outward looking "Spirit of Leave".
Proving once more that Brexit was not driven by xenophobic, Little Englander antipathy towards the continent, but by a rational and mature realization that the UK was not a good fit in an ever more integrated European Union.
Absolutely. 100%.
The one thing the EU got directly involved in was vaccines and as a result they have shown itself to be a bureaucratic, shambling and dare I say sclerotic mess.
The UK has shown itself to be innovative, quick and dare I say nimble in achieving better results - with contracts signed three months earlier and a rollout that is working.
Germany and other nations had contracts ready to sign in June. Because of the EU interference they weren't signed for another couple of months causing needless delay resulting in what we see today.
A perfect realisation that demonstrates exactly what some of us have said here.
So we seem to be doing better on something than the EU. Has to happen sometimes. Law of averages. But please get back to my 12.47 post. It's important and lying there unanswered. Until it is - and you really ought to be able to - you stand exposed as somebody who only likes Robert Peston when he says things that you like.
I got back to you. I like knowing the truth. If the truth is unpleasant, I still want to know it. I don't want only sunshine and unicorns - if he reports the truth, even if the truth is horrific - then he is doing a good job as a reporter. It isn't a reporters job to report only things that make us smile.
If you can post anything well sourced and factual that I have objected to him reporting then you will have a point. But the problem with Peston is its so rare for him to post anything well sourced and factual. He is the proverbial broken clock.
You didn't. Don't lie to me. The post is at 12.47 and the very simple question therein is unanswered. Conclusions will be drawn if you keep avoiding it and blustering.
I've answered it three times.
You're asking me to say when he's reported something factual and well sourced and I've disliked it. I've said that I can't as it's not possible. I like reporting that is factual and well sourced.
Asking me to find a factual report I dislike is like asking someone to name a child they dislike. It is an absurd suggestion. I like the truth, you're asking the impossible.
No! Please focus. I know you're not thick. We are looking for a Pesto story that was (i) well-sourced and truthful and (ii) went against what you believed before you read it. Thus a story of his that you "liked" for quality but which challenged rather than reinforced your views. An equivalent for you of what this AZ/EU story of his is for me. C'mon. It should be easy. If you can't do it, the inescapable conclusion is that in your eyes a "good piece of journalism" is simply one that bolsters your world view. That would be quite a negative outcome so I expect you to come up with the goods. And don't rush. It's important and worth taking some time over.
Apparently there is a poll out there showing a MAGA party would push the Republicans into third nationally.
Every argument advanced by the never Trump republicans like the Lincoln Project, as well as many on here, does not hold water.
There is.
It had the Democrats on 46%, a Trumpite Patriots Party on 23% and the GOP on just 17% if such a Patriots Party was formed by Trump. Very conservative voters would vote 55% Patriots to just 24% GOP.
In such a nightmare scenario for the GOP they may as well go the whole hog and support PR for Congress
"Donald Trump's Patriot Party".
Lord, take me now.
Trump is the Republican party's Farage issue.
But its worse than that as Farage has 5-10% of the vote and it seems Trump has 20%+ at the moment.
The Republican party are going to have to find a way to silence him and his clan while trying to get someone they can vaguely control in front of those voters. It isn't going to be easy.
Of course in the dying days of the May regime one poll had the Tories on just 17% and the Brexit Party on 26% so not much different to the US numbers.
What is clear is that the Tories could not win without their Brexit wing and the GOP cannot win withouts its Trumper wing and at the moment the Brexit wing of the Tories is bigger than the Tory establishment wing and similarly the Trump wing of the GOP is bigger than the GOP establishment wing.
But the Republicans can't win without the suburbs either: so, it's a really tough call for them.
If you generalise wildly, for the 90s and the early years of the 2000s, the cities were for the Dems, while the rural and small town America was for the Republicans, and suburbia was split.
President Trump supercharged the vote from rural and small town America - the bits of the US left behind by globalisation and the march of technology. And he also discovered that rural and small town America was rich in electoral college votes relative to actual votes.
Of course, it helped that - in 2016 - the Democrats put up someone who was the very epitome of globalisation and technology and cities and identity politics.
But it doing this, the Republicans lost the suburban vote.
Now, if the Democrats fuck up (and they may very well do so), then the Republicans can probably take some of that back. But the suburbs want boring. They don't want radical change. They are full of people doing "OK", who want to keep doing "OK".
Rural and small town America wants trade wars. They want their industry back.
Currently, I don't see how the circle is squared, or the square circled.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on point of departure - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or possibly deplaning to a secure holding area in the airport for an hour to get the plane ready for the second leg. With the way Dubai has flouted the "business" travel exemptions that many countries have I wouldn't trust them to implement a departure side quarantine system.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on final point of departure to UK - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or enforce it based on a combination of origin and transit hub, with quarantine being based on the most restrictive place you travel from or through.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on point of departure - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or possibly deplaning to a secure holding area in the airport for an hour to get the plane ready for the second leg.
That's how BA was running flights to Australia via Changi....briefly, then it all stopped.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
Yep, there’s no direct flights from Aus or NZ, they all have to stop somewhere in Asia or Arabia to put more fuel in the plane!
So, either lots of people across the German government made the same howling mathematical error (which seems unlikely), or the journalist is simply lying (but he sounds sincere?). OR there was a concerted effort in German government circles to smear the AZ vaccine, and distract from the failures of EU governments and the EU over their vaccine procurement.
All seem quite unlikely, but one of them must be true, unless I am missing something.
Sir Kier might be be Labour's Kinnock? The wait for Labour's Blair continues...
Starmer's Aaaaaaaallllllrrrrriiiigggghhhhttt!
I'd quite like to see a Starmer Exit Market on BF. Not sure how I'd price it though.
He'll have to be allowed to lose at least one GE so he's going nowhere.
Yes, I think that's roughly my view too. There's clearly some internal risks within Labour, and those will be at their greatest at the exit from these crazy times - when the left (and everyone else) can hobnob once again.
My view of Starmer is that he's actually quite good but not an election winner. Therefore he'll only win if he faces an election loser. I don't see Boris as being that, but there are quite a few possible Tory leaders that might be should the Tories change horses. Patel for example - I think she's very capable and in many ways I hope she will be leader one day - however I'm 100% sure that she's far more chalk-and-cheese than one would like.
I think Starmer will face some unrest in the ranks during the next 12m. There are quite a few self-congratulating politicians of the left that won't want to face up to their careers being over. I think he'll survive and thrive though.
Does the UK have J&J doses? How many and on what timescale?
30m initial order, priority delivery timescale (starting in April), 22m option for H2 delivery.
*EU eyes look on, enviously....*
The generous, outward looking "Spirit of Leave".
Proving once more that Brexit was not driven by xenophobic, Little Englander antipathy towards the continent, but by a rational and mature realization that the UK was not a good fit in an ever more integrated European Union.
Absolutely. 100%.
The one thing the EU got directly involved in was vaccines and as a result they have shown itself to be a bureaucratic, shambling and dare I say sclerotic mess.
The UK has shown itself to be innovative, quick and dare I say nimble in achieving better results - with contracts signed three months earlier and a rollout that is working.
Germany and other nations had contracts ready to sign in June. Because of the EU interference they weren't signed for another couple of months causing needless delay resulting in what we see today.
A perfect realisation that demonstrates exactly what some of us have said here.
So we seem to be doing better on something than the EU. Has to happen sometimes. Law of averages. But please get back to my 12.47 post. It's important and lying there unanswered. Until it is - and you really ought to be able to - you stand exposed as somebody who only likes Robert Peston when he says things that you like.
I got back to you. I like knowing the truth. If the truth is unpleasant, I still want to know it. I don't want only sunshine and unicorns - if he reports the truth, even if the truth is horrific - then he is doing a good job as a reporter. It isn't a reporters job to report only things that make us smile.
If you can post anything well sourced and factual that I have objected to him reporting then you will have a point. But the problem with Peston is its so rare for him to post anything well sourced and factual. He is the proverbial broken clock.
You didn't. Don't lie to me. The post is at 12.47 and the very simple question therein is unanswered. Conclusions will be drawn if you keep avoiding it and blustering.
I've answered it three times.
You're asking me to say when he's reported something factual and well sourced and I've disliked it. I've said that I can't as it's not possible. I like reporting that is factual and well sourced.
Asking me to find a factual report I dislike is like asking someone to name a child they dislike. It is an absurd suggestion. I like the truth, you're asking the impossible.
No! Please focus. I know you're not thick. We are looking for a Pesto story that was (i) well-sourced and truthful and (ii) went against what you believed before you read it. Thus a story of his that you "liked" for quality but which challenged rather than reinforced your views. An equivalent for you of what this AZ/EU story of his is for me. C'mon. It should be easy. If you can't do it, the inescapable conclusion is that in your eyes a "good piece of journalism" is simply one that bolsters your world view. That would be quite a negative outcome so I expect you to come up with the goods. And don't rush. It's important and worth taking some time over.
Asking me to find a well sourced and truthful Peston story is tough enough at the best of times. Asking me to find one that is well sourced, truthful and goes against my beliefs? I don't know if such a thing even exists. That's like asking me to find Big Foot.
Why don't you find a well sourced, factual Peston story that you believe would go against my beliefs, and I can tell you what I think.
Germany has a selective education system, which probably doesn't help. Mind you, I wouldn't bet on the UK numbers being that much different. Innumeracy is shockingly widespread. And a lot of innumerate people seem to end up as journalists, in all countries.
It's strange the German newspaper got essentially a comprehension, not numeracy, question wrong.
There is plenty of difficult maths in establishing efficacy - plenty of potential errors it is easy to make - but confusing the % of people in a category with efficacy for that category is not one of them - if that is indeed what they did.
The only thing that really makes sense, is some sort of transcription or translation error in the document.
But you’d have thought the hack, and his head of department, and the editor, would have done a considerable amount of checking before splashing the story on their front page!
I don't think they even had the data, they just had the word of a politician who had been told about the data.
Are we sure the info wasn't leaked to Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan?... Trenter percenter.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on point of departure - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or possibly deplaning to a secure holding area in the airport for an hour to get the plane ready for the second leg. With the way Dubai has flouted the "business" travel exemptions that many countries have I wouldn't trust them to implement a departure side quarantine system.
Yes, you’d need to do it with a dedicated plane and crew for the entire journey, and everyone on board going from eg Sydney to Dubai or London. No-one allowed to board the plane in Dubai, including cleaners, food service workers etc.
Possible but expensive (but cheaper for the punters than quarantine in U.K.) and usually a nightmare for the airline to find the plane for such an unusual trip - but thankfully they have a few spare planes parked up at the moment.
The ‘business exemption’ is being flouted by individual travellers, not by airlines or destinations.
Germany has a selective education system, which probably doesn't help. Mind you, I wouldn't bet on the UK numbers being that much different. Innumeracy is shockingly widespread. And a lot of innumerate people seem to end up as journalists, in all countries.
I doubt it, Germany has one of the most educated populations in the western world
It's not entirely about education (though that helps- nearly everyone can get better at nearly everything with the right mix of teaching, effort and support).
There's a sense of number-grock that a minority of people have. The ability to look at a situation, pick out numbers and Intuit whether they fit together or not.
Such people are probably over-represented here, so we're surprised that others can't say "there must be something wrong with that 8%."
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).
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on final point of departure to UK - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or enforce it based on a combination of origin and transit hub, with quarantine being based on the most restrictive place you travel from or through.
No need, a secure deplaning location in the transit location only accessible to the plane's passengers for an hour or so while the plane is prepped for the second journey. Have two sets of crews on board.
So, either lots of people across the German government made the same howling mathematical error (which seems unlikely), or the journalist is simply lying (but he sounds sincere?). OR there was a concerted effort in German government circles to smear the AZ vaccine, and distract from the failures of EU governments and the EU over their vaccine procurement.
All seem quite unlikely, but one of them must be true, unless I am missing something.
The sort of journalists other journalists like to have round in the world to make themselves look good. A sort of journalistic Gavin Williamson if you will for the Kay Burleys, Beth Rigbys and Robert Pestons of the world.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on final point of departure to UK - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or enforce it based on a combination of origin and transit hub, with quarantine being based on the most restrictive place you travel from or through.
No need, a secure deplaning location in the transit location only accessible to the plane's passengers for an hour or so while the plane is prepped for the second journey. Have two sets of crews on board.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
You'd simply ban transit passengers and let the market figure out the mechanics of flying ultra long haul.
Or enforce quarantine based on final point of departure to UK - which would mean all the super-hubs.
Or enforce it based on a combination of origin and transit hub, with quarantine being based on the most restrictive place you travel from or through.
No need, a secure deplaning location in the transit location only accessible to the plane's passengers for an hour or so while the plane is prepped for the second journey. Have two sets of crews on board.
That also works.
What it also does is pressurise other countries to want to be part of a global whitelist system that sidesteps quarantine measures. If we did it and eventually opened up simple travel with Asia with just a pre-departure negative test required European countries would surely want to copy the system and join, Biden's USA too. FOMO is a huge driver of action.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
Yep, there’s no direct flights from Aus or NZ, they all have to stop somewhere in Asia or Arabia to put more fuel in the plane!
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).
My take on Cummings is that it didn't change people's behaviour, but it allowed wankers who were always going to break the rules to point and say 'look, he did it, so why shouldn't I?'. Basically - it gave them an excuse to justify why they were being wankers.
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.
I've just read an article about the growing role of TikTok for brand influencers. So I have downloaded TikTok for the first time.
Its like crack for morons.
I am hooked
And the Chinese will know everything about you in 30 days...
Assuming he uses Zoom there's not much more to know.
Very little since I started consulting work. Much prefer Google Meet.
"Elizabeth Denham, the information commissioner told the Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport sub-committee on Online Harms and Disinformation that she never uses Facebook or WhatsApp, only Signal."
They put George Washington on the one dollar bill. He was a British subject.
That was in dispute (not least because the Americans were not vouchsafed the same rights as "freeborn" British subjects. Like voting. There was never, ever, any dispute about whether a RN captain [edit:] in actual command of a HM ship was a British subject or not, that I can remember.
Mind, there was lots and lots of dispute about whether many a member of the crew forward of the mainmast was a British subject or US citizen. Hence the War of 1812, in part.
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 Handelblatt 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.
Also, even of people later tweet a clarification or even delete the tweet, it gets snapshotted and used as "evidence".
Sir Kier might be be Labour's Kinnock? The wait for Labour's Blair continues...
If you want your opinion to be taken seriously, spelling his name correctly would be a good start.
So long as Starmer has positive favourability ratings, he's a significant asset. 2001 was the last time that Labour contested a general election with a genuinely popular party leader. It would be good to contest an election where pictures of the Labour leader no longer appear on leaflets put out by the Conservatives.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
Surely you think this is all a load of nonsense because it's no worse than a bad cold and we should all get back to normal?
Tell you what. I will admit covid is a serious issue.
But then you have to admit that lockdowns have devastating consequences. On children. On young people. On people in poverty. On jobs and the economy. on mental health. On the fabric of society. On human rights. Its eminently clear today.
I at least have tried to have a debate about whether lockdowns are worth it and whether the extent to which the young are being sacrificed is worth it.
All you and others like you have tried to do is shut down debate.
It's a non-debate in terms of the big picture. Every single thing you mention would have been worse with no lockdown. There is no "cost of lockdown" because it was not an either/or choice. Or the cost is negative if you like. It's large and negative.
The valid debate has been - still is - around the details of the restrictions. The timing. The scope. Border control. The balance between trust and law. The extent to which it should be policed. All of this.
You have shown not the slightest interest in having a debate like that. All you've done on this whole topic since the virus emerged is spread lies and write fatuously pretentious faux "man of the world" drivel.
More correctly, the debate should not be about lockdown or not, but about what level of non-medical interventions (social distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene, PPE) is required to minimize the net impact of the outbreak. And that has to include consideration of all the issues Contrarian lists.
It so happens, lockdowns seem to be about the most socially doable mechanism. It need not have been the only option, or even the best one. For example, we could all have agreed to wear full PPE (full Tyvek body suit, booties, gloves, hood, N95, goggles, face shield - assuming no shortages), and gone about our normal business (except eating and drinking in public) and learnt how to don and doff our PPE correctly and decontaminate at the appropriate points in our activities.
There may well have been a better optimal mix of policies. Unfortunately, we'll never know, because this is not an experiment that can be re-run. And no, the UK's experience cannot really be directly compared with that of other nations because a pandemic is a complex adaptive system, a type of system which is extremely sensitive to initial states and inputs - i.e. where outcomes vary massively based on changes of initial state and input below the level at which measurements can be made. I think that drawing any inference from international comparisons is fraught, other than 1. timing is important, and 2. level of compliance with government guidelines/rules is much, much more important for effectiveness than the actual guidelines/rules themselves.
(1) for sure. As for (2) imo the messaging is more important than the precise legal rules since (least here) it's not aggressively policed. It's about getting the public to do the right thing. Which in turn means communicating a proper understanding of the virus and the risks, plus generating a sense of trust in government.
Not sure you are right on the last point - at least not fully so. Messaging - quality, consistency, and multiple channels with multiple champions - is clearly important. But some societies are just better at trusting and hence implementing governmental orders (whether they are good governments or not) and are better about thinking about others rather than themselves. The US and UK are bad (judged in pandemic response terms - these can be good qualities in other fields, such as scientific research and innovation) on both these cultural parameters.
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.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
Yep, there’s no direct flights from Aus or NZ, they all have to stop somewhere in Asia or Arabia to put more fuel in the plane!
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
The deletion and explanation are ok, but the damage is done.
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.
Apparently there is a poll out there showing a MAGA party would push the Republicans into third nationally.
Every argument advanced by the never Trump republicans like the Lincoln Project, as well as many on here, does not hold water.
There is.
It had the Democrats on 46%, a Trumpite Patriots Party on 23% and the GOP on just 17% if such a Patriots Party was formed by Trump. Very conservative voters would vote 55% Patriots to just 24% GOP.
In such a nightmare scenario for the GOP they may as well go the whole hog and support PR for Congress
"Donald Trump's Patriot Party".
Lord, take me now.
Trump is the Republican party's Farage issue.
But its worse than that as Farage has 5-10% of the vote and it seems Trump has 20%+ at the moment.
The Republican party are going to have to find a way to silence him and his clan while trying to get someone they can vaguely control in front of those voters. It isn't going to be easy.
I have always been convinced that impeachment failing and Trump being free to stand again definitely suits the Democrats most. While Trump is around the GOP are going to remain bitterly divided.
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.
Wrong. Your assumptions will give you the answer you want. No need for a calculator.
Does anyone have any links to any studies showing that for a single dose of vaccine, that after 2-3 weeks there's a >50% reduction in viral load or hospitalisations for 1 dose? Asking for a sceptical friend, who can read scientific papers.
As an aside, as I know other fantasy readers are here, Waterstones has the fourth entry in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive (Rhythms of War) half-price, so it's just £12.50 for a hardback over 1,200 pages.
Does anyone have any links to any studies showing that for a single dose of vaccine, that after 2-3 weeks there's a >50% reduction in viral load or hospitalisations for 1 dose? Asking for a sceptical friend, who can read scientific papers.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Do you understand how Fake News works? How a tweet from a very senior scientist can be screengrabbed and sent to everyone on the globe?
Even if the "fact" was true, why did he not wait for hard data and proof before tweeting something so obviously alarmist and scary? He's a fucking virologist, the globe is being attacked by a virus, antivaxxing is a massive problem, which could kill thousands.
Apparently there is a poll out there showing a MAGA party would push the Republicans into third nationally.
Every argument advanced by the never Trump republicans like the Lincoln Project, as well as many on here, does not hold water.
There is.
It had the Democrats on 46%, a Trumpite Patriots Party on 23% and the GOP on just 17% if such a Patriots Party was formed by Trump. Very conservative voters would vote 55% Patriots to just 24% GOP.
In such a nightmare scenario for the GOP they may as well go the whole hog and support PR for Congress
"Donald Trump's Patriot Party".
Lord, take me now.
Trump is the Republican party's Farage issue.
But its worse than that as Farage has 5-10% of the vote and it seems Trump has 20%+ at the moment.
The Republican party are going to have to find a way to silence him and his clan while trying to get someone they can vaguely control in front of those voters. It isn't going to be easy.
I have always been convinced that impeachment failing and Trump being free to stand again definitely suits the Democrats most. While Trump is around the GOP are going to remain bitterly divided.
The GOP need to silence Trump and his clan and then try to emancipate what's left of MAGA in the same way they dealt with the Tea Party. It's going to be both a lot harder and I'm not sure there is any easy way of doing it.
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. 🙄
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
Yep, there’s no direct flights from Aus or NZ, they all have to stop somewhere in Asia or Arabia to put more fuel in the plane!
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.
Apparently there is a poll out there showing a MAGA party would push the Republicans into third nationally.
Every argument advanced by the never Trump republicans like the Lincoln Project, as well as many on here, does not hold water.
There is.
It had the Democrats on 46%, a Trumpite Patriots Party on 23% and the GOP on just 17% if such a Patriots Party was formed by Trump. Very conservative voters would vote 55% Patriots to just 24% GOP.
In such a nightmare scenario for the GOP they may as well go the whole hog and support PR for Congress
"Donald Trump's Patriot Party".
Lord, take me now.
Trump is the Republican party's Farage issue.
But its worse than that as Farage has 5-10% of the vote and it seems Trump has 20%+ at the moment.
The Republican party are going to have to find a way to silence him and his clan while trying to get someone they can vaguely control in front of those voters. It isn't going to be easy.
I have always been convinced that impeachment failing and Trump being free to stand again definitely suits the Democrats most. While Trump is around the GOP are going to remain bitterly divided.
The GOP need to silence Trump and his clan and then try to emancipate what's left of MAGA in the same way they dealt with the Tea Party. It's going to be both a lot harder and I'm not sure there is any easy way of doing it.
That only happened in 2012 as the Romney-Ryan ticket incorporated much of the Tea Party's agenda into their platform.
Hence it is likely Trumpism even without Trump will still play a major part in the 2024 GOP ticket if the GOP is not going to split in 2
The option "To Remain in the EU" doesn't exist in January 2021. Should be "To Join the EU" or "To Remain Outside the EU".
And then there's the question of what terms the UK would be offered.....
So we can throw out the Remain votes - giving 100% of valid votes being cast to Leave.
Too late to leave, too
The only valid response was "update your question, you numpties"
They can't monitor movement if they change the question. However, it would be really helpful if they started asking parallel Rejoin/Stay out questions, to gauge what (if any) difference they get, and then after a few iterations they can drop the redundant Leave/Remain question.
I wonder if "Rejoin" against "Stay out" would poll better or worse than "Join"? Also whether having "Remain Out" as the other option would confuse people, or just wind up the likes of AC Grayling.
In the absence of any legitimate way to socialise, is this simply an outlet for young men to feel part of something, their masks concealing their identities and enabling them to violently channel their frustrations?
There are more sinister influences at play. Messages on social media, overt and covert, have whipped up anger. Misinformation has even been spread by some politicians.
Sounds like the sort excuses some in the media used for the London riots...if only they hadn't closed the yuff centre, they wouldn't have looted JJB...
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.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
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.
£200 for a haircut is quite a lot, although for some barbers it would be a mere snip.
I don't know a single barber who's *not* cutting people's hair on the sly. They claim they need to to survive.
How many barbers do you know personally? Sample of 2, 1, 0 or what?
I phoned up our occasional dog barber (aka "groomer") today, offering to drop our dog off at her home for collection later. The dog's a long haired collie/retriever who has just been part shaved for a major operation and currently has an exposed ar*e like an orang utan's. No joy. It turns out that any grooming work is illegal other than that arising from a vet's referral on strict medical need. The groomer has had just 2 jobs in 3 weeks.
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.
A half-baked announcement. Only covring a handful of countries. Full of apologetic wibble. Then next week when a new variant pops up in Dubai or Canada, he'll be dragged in to doing the right thing.
Just close the fecking borders - listen to the Pritster!
Why the hell should people quarantine if they're coming from New Zealand or Taiwan?
Priti's solution to any problem is to close borders. She's only trying to cover up her department's failure at enforcing the regulations we already have. Just like Hancock, who can't explain why we still don't have a Taiwanese-style tracing regime a year after they set theirs up.
Or what we could do is work with these countries to create a global standard and baseline for what border quarantine measures should be and once our own virus levels have dropped to almost nothing through a combination of lockdown, vaccines and tough border controls we can selectively open them to countries which have the same measures in place and the same low virus levels.
Indeed. But we need to work with a white list of countries, not a black list as some are suggesting.
We could do that too. And we need vaccine certificates - there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated. But mindlessly and indiscriminately blocking borders is an option that the government has, quite rightly rejected, at least for the moment. I'm just surprised it's such a popular option on here - usually this is a more thoughtful site.
"there's no reason to quarantine someone who has been vaccinated"
Therefore
there's no reason to quarantine someone who has tested positive but is asymptomatic.
Right?
I think that's why I'd still go down the pre-flight test and whitelist countries that have got similarly tough border measures and resulting low infection rates. At least until such time as vaccine penetration is much higher across the world.
A plane arrives in London, some passengers from New Zealand, some from India.
Which do you quarantine. Oh, they all transited Dubai.....
Yep, there’s no direct flights from Aus or NZ, they all have to stop somewhere in Asia or Arabia to put more fuel in the plane!
Yes... but if travel between the UK and Australia opened up again, it would start straight back up.
With really careful attention paid to the winds en route when planning. Would be a shame if they had to divert for fuel on the way, and break the plane’s quarantine bubble.
From Perth to London it only usually squeaked home on range, but no-one cared about a quick tech stop in Rome when there wasn’t a pandemic on.
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.
If it was true and covered up in the UK, somebody involved in the UK side of things would have blown the whistle by now. There are millions of lives at stake.
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.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
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.
Wrong. Your assumptions will give you the answer you want. No need for a calculator.
True. But if we want extra marks for precision and auditability ...
£200 for a haircut is quite a lot, although for some barbers it would be a mere snip.
I don't know a single barber who's *not* cutting people's hair on the sly. They claim they need to to survive.
How many barbers do you know personally? Sample of 2, 1, 0 or what?
I phoned up our occasional dog barber (aka "groomer") today, offering to drop our dog off at her home for collection later. The dog's a long haired collie/retriever who has just been part shaved for a major operation and currently has an exposed ar*e like an orang utan's. No joy. It turns out that any grooming work is illegal other than that arising from a vet's referral on strict medical need. The groomer has had just 2 jobs in 3 weeks.
I made the same point as you. However it's vital to know at least one barber that doesn't specialise in dogs.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
Google translate is your friend here.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Do you understand how Fake News works? How a tweet from a very senior scientist can be screengrabbed and sent to everyone on the globe?
Even if the "fact" was true, why did he not wait for hard data and proof before tweeting something so obviously alarmist and scary? He's a fucking virologist, the globe is being attacked by a virus, antivaxxing is a massive problem, which could kill thousands.
Jeez. Why are you defending all this?
You can invent Tweets from very senior scientists if you want to, though - and you can make them look exactly like genuine Tweets from very senior scientists. The Handelsblatt story did not even come close to passing the smell test. It was a disastrous failure for the journalist and the newspaper, but I don't think we should overdo the wider damage it will cause.
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. 🙄
Indeed. There is no contest between the two.
65 million Brits. Say 60% voted non-Tory and want to bash the government, of 70% who voted. So 58% susceptible to the implicit messaging of Cummings. Round up to 60%. Of these, 50% are not affected, because they care about themselves and their families. So 30% of the population take Cumming's lead, and ALL of them are infected as a result. 1% of them die. 195,000. Clearly this is incorrect as to date for the entire pandemic we've recorded 100k. But this is what some pretty draconian assumptions (30% of the entire population change their behaviour just because of Cummings, and all of them get infected) get you on a fag packet.
6 billion people in the developing world, say 2 billion (India and a few more) expected to rely on AZN. If just 1% of their behaviour is impacted by this, and 1% of them die, that is already more.
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.
£200 for a haircut is quite a lot, although for some barbers it would be a mere snip.
I don't know a single barber who's *not* cutting people's hair on the sly. They claim they need to to survive.
How many barbers do you know personally? Sample of 2, 1, 0 or what?
I phoned up our occasional dog barber (aka "groomer") today, offering to drop our dog off at her home for collection later. The dog's a long haired collie/retriever who has just been part shaved for a major operation and currently has an exposed ar*e like an orang utan's. No joy. It turns out that any grooming work is illegal other than that arising from a vet's referral on strict medical need. The groomer has had just 2 jobs in 3 weeks.
I made the same point as you. However it's vital to know at least one barber that doesn't specialise in dogs.
I'd have thought it a lot safer to use a hound's hairdresser. Not at all likely to catch the pox off her subjects, ergo less likely to pass it on. Fleas, now, that might be different. Definitely not a habit to have the next pandemic of Yersinia pestis.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
Google translate is your friend here.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
The Handelsblatt claim went viral. All over the world. It was repeated by Reuters, and multiple other news feeds. And the Guardian this morning (they've now amended)
It's not just one top German boffin. It's a seed of horrible doubt now sown all around the world. Your blitheness is astonishing. I can't help feeling if British media/Tories had done this you'd be slightly less forgiving.
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.
Speaks someone who hasn't seen fake news about this first hand. I've watched videos forwarded to my parents full of this bullshit already, it won't be long until the Russian bot farms start to produce these memes and have direct quotes from German scientists to back up their bullshit claims. They've muddied the waters over the cheapest and easiest to transport vaccine that is being produced at a rate of 2bn per year in India for the developing world. It is unforgivable.
The whole point about fake news is that it is fake. It can be made up. Those susceptible to fake news will believe it whatever. The story was appalling. The newspaper and the journalist deserve every bit of crap they are getting. But in the great scheme of things it will make very little practical difference because it was killed too quickly to make it into any mainstream media coverage.
Apparently there is a poll out there showing a MAGA party would push the Republicans into third nationally.
Every argument advanced by the never Trump republicans like the Lincoln Project, as well as many on here, does not hold water.
There is.
It had the Democrats on 46%, a Trumpite Patriots Party on 23% and the GOP on just 17% if such a Patriots Party was formed by Trump. Very conservative voters would vote 55% Patriots to just 24% GOP.
In such a nightmare scenario for the GOP they may as well go the whole hog and support PR for Congress
"Donald Trump's Patriot Party".
Lord, take me now.
Trump is the Republican party's Farage issue.
But its worse than that as Farage has 5-10% of the vote and it seems Trump has 20%+ at the moment.
The Republican party are going to have to find a way to silence him and his clan while trying to get someone they can vaguely control in front of those voters. It isn't going to be easy.
I have always been convinced that impeachment failing and Trump being free to stand again definitely suits the Democrats most. While Trump is around the GOP are going to remain bitterly divided.
The GOP need to silence Trump and his clan and then try to emancipate what's left of MAGA in the same way they dealt with the Tea Party. It's going to be both a lot harder and I'm not sure there is any easy way of doing it.
That only happened in 2012 as the Romney-Ryan ticket incorporated much of the Tea Party's agenda into their platform.
Hence it is likely Trumpism even without Trump will still play a major part in the 2024 GOP ticket if the GOP is not going to split in 2
Trumpism had no solutions, just an eye to whipping up passions over people's pain. The GOP can reclaim voters by actually coming up with some policy solutions.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
Google translate is your friend here.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
The Handelsblatt claim went viral. All over the world. It was repeated by Reuters, and multiple other news feeds. And the Guardian this morning (they've now amended)
It's not just one top German boffin. It's a seed of horrible doubt now sown all around the world. Your blitheness is astonishing. I can't help feeling if British media/Tories had done this you'd be slightly less forgiving.
More AZ vaccine for us. The proof will be in the pudding.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
Google translate is your friend here.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
Let's put the shoe on the other foot, it's The Sun making the report and it's about the Belgian Janssen vaccine. The government is experiencing difficulties in procuring it to the extent we wanted and then briefs a journalist to say "it's shite anyway" and that journalist with no investigation simply repeats that as "this is shit" with no presentation of any evidence to support it other than "trust us, we have a source".
Everyone on here playing it down right now would be spitting with rage at Boris and everyone else involved with this.
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.
You did. So you certainly have requirement (iv), your integrity. But I'm not sure about your (ii), the behavioural assumptions. This is just one small circ German outlet. I know the internet can catch fire over nothing but I'd be shocked if this had anything like that impact even in Germany let alone elsewhere. So I both hope you're wrong (obviously) and think you will prove to be.
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).
My take on Cummings is that it didn't change people's behaviour, but it allowed wankers who were always going to break the rules to point and say 'look, he did it, so why shouldn't I?'. Basically - it gave them an excuse to justify why they were being wankers.
The nonsense in early June and the variable policing responses did much more damage long term.
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.
Huh? He deletes the tweet and says wait for the manufacturers.
What's wrong with that?
Your reading comprehension! I guess you understood around 8 % of that post.
Google translate is your friend here.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
The Handelsblatt claim went viral. All over the world. It was repeated by Reuters, and multiple other news feeds. And the Guardian this morning (they've now amended)
It's not just one top German boffin. It's a seed of horrible doubt now sown all around the world. Your blitheness is astonishing. I can't help feeling if British media/Tories had done this you'd be slightly less forgiving.
More AZ vaccine for us. The proof will be in the pudding.
Either it's okay for the old dears, in which case huzzah, or it's even more effective among the younger cohorts, in which case huzzah.
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.
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?
Comments
The road to emoji timeout is paved with good intentions. That’s what Facebook seems to be telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by suspending his official chatbot for a week. Campaigning for widespread COVID-19 inoculation, the bot sent users messages asking them to name unvaccinated people over 60 so Netanyahu could personally persuade them. But that violates Facebook’s rule against soliciting medical information. It wasn't his first infraction, either: His chatbot was suspended before a 2019 election for messaging about “Arabs who want to destroy us all.” Netanyahu’s party defended the vaccination appeals, noting the campaign aims to save lives.
I sort of agree this use of FB is undesirable, as I certainly did about Trump's tweets, but I do think we have a problem that a very small number of social media channels are now actively censoring political leaders who say undesirable things. On the whole, I think the test should simply be "Is it legal"? - anything more than that gets us into deep water.
The only valid response was "update your question, you numpties"
We are looking for a Pesto story that was (i) well-sourced and truthful and (ii) went against what you believed before you read it. Thus a story of his that you "liked" for quality but which challenged rather than reinforced your views.
An equivalent for you of what this AZ/EU story of his is for me.
C'mon. It should be easy.
If you can't do it, the inescapable conclusion is that in your eyes a "good piece of journalism" is simply one that bolsters your world view.
That would be quite a negative outcome so I expect you to come up with the goods.
And don't rush. It's important and worth taking some time over.
If you generalise wildly, for the 90s and the early years of the 2000s, the cities were for the Dems, while the rural and small town America was for the Republicans, and suburbia was split.
President Trump supercharged the vote from rural and small town America - the bits of the US left behind by globalisation and the march of technology. And he also discovered that rural and small town America was rich in electoral college votes relative to actual votes.
Of course, it helped that - in 2016 - the Democrats put up someone who was the very epitome of globalisation and technology and cities and identity politics.
But it doing this, the Republicans lost the suburban vote.
Now, if the Democrats fuck up (and they may very well do so), then the Republicans can probably take some of that back. But the suburbs want boring. They don't want radical change. They are full of people doing "OK", who want to keep doing "OK".
Rural and small town America wants trade wars. They want their industry back.
Currently, I don't see how the circle is squared, or the square circled.
https://twitter.com/washingtonski/status/1353841879754878977?s=20
So, either lots of people across the German government made the same howling mathematical error (which seems unlikely), or the journalist is simply lying (but he sounds sincere?). OR there was a concerted effort in German government circles to smear the AZ vaccine, and distract from the failures of EU governments and the EU over their vaccine procurement.
All seem quite unlikely, but one of them must be true, unless I am missing something.
My view of Starmer is that he's actually quite good but not an election winner. Therefore he'll only win if he faces an election loser. I don't see Boris as being that, but there are quite a few possible Tory leaders that might be should the Tories change horses. Patel for example - I think she's very capable and in many ways I hope she will be leader one day - however I'm 100% sure that she's far more chalk-and-cheese than one would like.
I think Starmer will face some unrest in the ranks during the next 12m. There are quite a few self-congratulating politicians of the left that won't want to face up to their careers being over. I think he'll survive and thrive though.
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1354006295637078016?s=20
Why don't you find a well sourced, factual Peston story that you believe would go against my beliefs, and I can tell you what I think.
https://twitter.com/thierrybaudet/status/1354077947599138816?s=19
Possible but expensive (but cheaper for the punters than quarantine in U.K.) and usually a nightmare for the airline to find the plane for such an unusual trip - but thankfully they have a few spare planes parked up at the moment.
The ‘business exemption’ is being flouted by individual travellers, not by airlines or destinations.
There's a sense of number-grock that a minority of people have. The ability to look at a situation, pick out numbers and Intuit whether they fit together or not.
Such people are probably over-represented here, so we're surprised that others can't say "there must be something wrong with that 8%."
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).
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
https://twitter.com/hendrikstreeck/status/1354038073001205762?s=20
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.
Telegraph
Mind, there was lots and lots of dispute about whether many a member of the crew forward of the mainmast was a British subject or US citizen. Hence the War of 1812, in part.
So long as Starmer has positive favourability ratings, he's a significant asset. 2001 was the last time that Labour contested a general election with a genuinely popular party leader. It would be good to contest an election where pictures of the Labour leader no longer appear on leaflets put out by the Conservatives.
What's wrong with that?
It's genuinely a disaster for the world IMO.
Even if the "fact" was true, why did he not wait for hard data and proof before tweeting something so obviously alarmist and scary? He's a fucking virologist, the globe is being attacked by a virus, antivaxxing is a massive problem, which could kill thousands.
Jeez. Why are you defending all this?
Don't be ridiculous claiming that cost lives while antivax BS doesn't. Show some "core data" to substantiate that. 🙄
Hence it is likely Trumpism even without Trump will still play a major part in the 2024 GOP ticket if the GOP is not going to split in 2
I wonder if "Rejoin" against "Stay out" would poll better or worse than "Join"? Also whether having "Remain Out" as the other option would confuse people, or just wind up the likes of AC Grayling.
There are more sinister influences at play. Messages on social media, overt and covert, have whipped up anger. Misinformation has even been spread by some politicians.
BBC News - Covid: Curfew stays despite 'scum' riots in Dutch cities
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55810229
Sounds like the sort excuses some in the media used for the London riots...if only they hadn't closed the yuff centre, they wouldn't have looted JJB...
I phoned up our occasional dog barber (aka "groomer") today, offering to drop our dog off at her home for collection later. The dog's a long haired collie/retriever who has just been part shaved for a major operation and currently has an exposed ar*e like an orang utan's. No joy. It turns out that any grooming work is illegal other than that arising from a vet's referral on strict medical need. The groomer has had just 2 jobs in 3 weeks.
From Perth to London it only usually squeaked home on range, but no-one cared about a quick tech stop in Rome when there wasn’t a pandemic on.
Yes the first tweet (not seen) might have been bad but this is addressing that.
And as for @Leon's fake news fear, and others, yes of course there may be some damage but if people are only going to look at one tweet by some German guy as their criterion for having the jab or not perhaps it's best to let them do their thing.
65 million Brits. Say 60% voted non-Tory and want to bash the government, of 70% who voted. So 58% susceptible to the implicit messaging of Cummings. Round up to 60%. Of these, 50% are not affected, because they care about themselves and their families. So 30% of the population take Cumming's lead, and ALL of them are infected as a result. 1% of them die. 195,000. Clearly this is incorrect as to date for the entire pandemic we've recorded 100k. But this is what some pretty draconian assumptions (30% of the entire population change their behaviour just because of Cummings, and all of them get infected) get you on a fag packet.
6 billion people in the developing world, say 2 billion (India and a few more) expected to rely on AZN. If just 1% of their behaviour is impacted by this, and 1% of them die, that is already more.
It's not just one top German boffin. It's a seed of horrible doubt now sown all around the world. Your blitheness is astonishing. I can't help feeling if British media/Tories had done this you'd be slightly less forgiving.
Everyone on here playing it down right now would be spitting with rage at Boris and everyone else involved with this.