Categories
Options
A glimmer of hope? – politicalbetting.com
A glimmer of hope? – politicalbetting.com
7.64 million doses have been administered as of 26 Jan. This includes 7.16 million first and 474,156 second dosesBy NationEngland: 6.67M (FD:6.22M) (SD:444K)Wales: 312.9K (FD:312.3K) (SD:639)Scotland: 468.7K (FD:462.1K) (SD:6,596)NI: 191.1K (FD:168.1K) (SD:22.91K) pic.twitter.com/fZY3hnZiia
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
They're reopening restaurants for outside dining on Friday. Whoopppeee!
Once again, halving cycle has accelerated. There is definitely now a detectable vaccine effect IMO. Hospitals and care homes have probably now got very little transmission because the people inside them are all immunised to at least some level. This is with around 2.4m people with partial or full immunity. As we start getting through to next week that number really explodes because that's when our vaccine programme took off.
Very, very slowly the light at the end of the tunnel is becoming brighter. It's the first time I've looked at these numbers ever and felt that way, it's desperately sad for all of those people who have died or have close family/friends who have died, hopefully our rapid rate of vaccination will prevent too much more of this.
Hopefully this is the darkest moment for the year.
(with apologies to our USAian correspondents)
both showing a bigger fall off in the older groups. Early days, though
Er.. that’s a bit damning, is it not?
The case numbers are encouraging though the extent to which this is related to vaccination or to the restrictions of lockdown is unclear.
Another thing which, to this observer, remains far from clear is the efficacy of the vaccination with the passage of time. If you had the first vaccination immediately after New Year it's roughly the three week point at which Pfizer recommended the second vaccination.
The question is how will the efficacy of the first vaccination look, not just after 20 days but after 40 days, 60 days or 80 days? Do we know the level of immunity or protection the initial vaccination will provide at that time scale? If you have had a vaccination and are following lockdown restrictions that's all well and good but the test will come when vaccinated people start moving around more freely or restrictions are lifted.
My presumption is if we are going to provide the second vaccination three months after the first - so around 85 days after the initial vaccination, there must be some level of confidence the level of immunity at that point will still be high and shortly after the second vaccination will reach the levels of 90% or greater suggested by Pfizer.
I don't know from where that confidence derives but that's the risk on which we are embarking - if we find that, 60 days after the first vaccination, the level of immunity has fallen away significantly, what then?
For now, let's hope the immunity level holds and those receiving the second vaccination from early April onwards will move quickly to near full immunity which would enable restrictions to be eased from Easter (which I suspect is the plan).
An earlier easing of restrictions, with significant numbers unvaccinated and most reliant on a single vaccination which might have limited immunity with the passage of time, looks risky but if the data suggests high levels of immunity remain 60-80 days after the initial vaccination, such a risk could be justified but I think we need to see the evidence.
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1353669287718899713
https://twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1353678287780909058
I mean, eff the F off
https://twitter.com/DanielCreminUK/status/1354485748498575375?s=20
But its habit of grandiose f-ups (Common Agricultural Policy, the euro, Yugoslavia, regional aid corruption, now vaccines etc.) certainly calls into question why it needs to be anything more than a loose free-trade organisation.
Morally and PR wise it would be the right thing to do.
Brexiteers you can back this as it would annoy the EU so much.
My fear is in the euphoria of the vaccinations and life getting back to the new normal people will want to forget what happened in 2020 and brush it under the mental carpet.
There needs to be a proper process of scrutiny via an independent public enquiry to which Ministers including the Prime Minister would be compelled to give evidence. We have a right to know what happened and why it happened - when, for example, expert advice was ignored and why.
The failure to close borders and the decision to send infected patients back into care homes are other areas where the public has a right to expect full scrutiny of Government at all levels.
Populations across the EU are looking at the UK and really questioning what the EU is doing, as thousands more Europeans are likely to die due to problems with vaccine supply
He said that this will reverberate across the capitals in the EU and will escalate across in the EH over the coming weeks
If they'd left the vaccine planning to the EU nations I'm sure lots of them would have done fine. But the Commission insisted it should be given the job. Ooops.
It won't be the "success" of Brexit Britain that threatens EU stability, it will be the nature of the EU itself. Who would want to hand MORE power to this gormless, futile institution?
When we have all been vaccinated the real Prime Ministerial fun starts. Managing the post Covid economic performance. That might be trickier.
I don't think that anyone is going to switch it all off, pull the dust sheets over the machinery and turn out the lights.
However, as the only thing that has been provided so far are gazillions of testing kits, no instructions, support, staff or extra space, without dramatic changes it will take time to have it ready for full schools.
Incidentally, I think that is probably what switched them in the end to closing schools - it finally dawned on them that their testing system was going to fail spectacularly and cause an utter catastrophe.
It probably still will do the former, but if we have a strong vaccination programme by the time schools start reopening the latter will be less of an issue.
We don't know how effective a single vaccination is after 40, 50 or 60 days. It may be it continues to provide strong immunity which would be fine but if it doesn't, we'll be back to square one having to re-vaccinate everyone.
We don't even know how long immunity exists for those who have received two vaccinations in all honesty.
I am convinced vaccines will rapidly evolve and improve so that, probably this year, we'll get a vaccine which provides 12 months or more of immunity with a single dose but we aren't there yet or rather we can't evidence we are there yet.
It's in all our interests for this virus to be quashed, globally.
The Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism alert warning that violent domestic extremists could attack in the coming weeks, emboldened by the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
DHS, in an alert issued Wednesday, said violent extremists opposed to the government and the presidential transition “could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence,” though the department said it doesn’t have evidence of a specific plot.
The DHS release was part of a public alert called a National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin.
The alert is the department’s first in about a year. The last such bulletin from DHS came in January 2020, warning about Iran’s potential to carry out cyberattacks. DHS notably didn’t issue an alert ahead of the Jan. 6 planned rally in Washington, D.C. that devolved into a mob siege at the Capitol, despite public chatter online that extremists planned to do so.
The alert described a series of factors in the recent past that have increased the potential for violence among U.S. extremists.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/dhs-issues-national-terrorism-alert-for-domestic-extremists-11611770893
I do have doubts that anything useful will be learned politically or governmentallly. There will be decisions wrong in hindsight which were reasonable at the time, and decisions wrong even without hindsight and which were not reasonable at the time, but distinction won't be made.
To go back to the tennis ball analogy, if you spin a tennis ball as you drop it, part of the tennis ball's surface might actually be rising, even as the ball en masse is falling.
If you want to compare EU and UK rates, you first have to aggregate both internally, then compare them.
This made me laugh.
I'm sure I reported that yesterday.
malcolmg said:
Hand to hand combat here............. brave man goes for all or nothing
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/01/my-sworn-evidence-on-the-sturgeon-affair/
What's your thinking on this?
I'm hugely pissed off with Scottish politics at the moment. But that aside I quite like both Sturgeon and Salmond. I was shocked that the BBC allowed Kirsty Wark free reign to mount a televised assassination of the latter.
My guess is that Salmond has just proved himself to be 'of the last century' and that Sturgeon has proved herself to be complacent.
Flag Quote · Off Topic Like
Yes it looks like a cesspit. Looks like those running the SNP and Civil Service in their desperation to join the METO# brigade , rigged their new procedure to specifically catch one person who was going to make a political comeback. They had a crowd of pals big up a few snogs , compliments , etc, even making some up etc to get him but made a mess and Salmond slaughtered them , so they thought they would get police charges to stop him and messed it up even more as he was cleared. Now fighting rearguard to hide all the evidence and using tame crown etc to have all hidden. You could not make it up , they are nearly as bent as the Tories. Unless they can whitewash the inquiry and brass it out then heads will fall. More and more leaking out so can only be a matter of time, so unless they can hold on , win election and have a referendum in short order , then Murrell towers will be bulldozed.
Hardly a squeak from unionist press on it either.
As you say Salmond may have been a man of the 70's and Sturgeon has made a real mess with all the feminist crap and Meto stuff , is just crazy.
Too many professional agitators in SNP at the top , interested in their hobby horses and big salaries rather than independence. Must be a clear out soon , May is last chance saloon.
-They have probably suffered a good deal by their proximity and lack of a border with the UK
-It would be of enormous benefit to have them come through Covid quickly due to their proximity and lack of border with the UK
-It would also annoy the EU, a lot
If you stick that money into producing vaccine does though, and they're handed out - I think temporarily this is a better use.
Where they go wrong is their dogma; they can't conceive of *any* alternative model within the continent of the Europe, and view it as an affront to their dream of a United Europe.
Rather than taking such a negative and absolutist view - and allowing only one permitted model, the EU, to exist - they'd do far better to let the positive case make itself for those it'd benefit over the alternatives, and otherwise welcome the regulatory and political diversity. Where that'd end up, of course, is a couple of outer rings, of varying levels of integration, and an inner core, with some countries occasionally moving from one to the other - and I don't see any issue with that.
It'd make Europe a stronger and happier place overall.
Report of Mr M's trial - insofar as it has gone. Will be interesting to see the written judgement in due course.
Speaking with some people in the last week they suspect the vaccine operation is drip feeding in to keep a constant tempo whilst managing supply of the AZ vaccine. General practice seems to be having it tougher on supply than hospital based vaccination centres mainly because they are all AZ, whilst I'd guess the hospitals can manage the quirks of the Pfizer stuff.
What I have also found is that if you know right people you can get onto a hospital based vaccination list with a fairly loose definition of why you should be getting one now. This corresponds with something I reported before Christmas that people within the NHS who had no need were getting themselves on the lists. How widespread this is difficult to say, you hope not massively but there appears no real shortage of the stuff at your local General.
As regards our wee friends in the EU. I have no problem with them stating their own interests but they are making a lot of demand on a vaccine that they haven't approved yet and I suspect they don't know contract law as well their supplier. The AZ vaccine, even more than here, was the cornerstone of the EU strategy so a slow/low supply is a problem. From what I can see there is an AZ EU supply chain, it involves Novasep in Belgium and they have problems though not clear if its their active product operation or their fill operation. Did the UK get some of Novaseps product? I bet it did, because the UK approved it early and AZ do not want to be storing the frozen active product for too long before going to filling, so they shipped it.
If EMA have concerns about AZ (and it looks like some questions are legitimate to ask) they seem remarkably antsy about not getting the stuff. Thus I suspect they will have to wait. We know that Pfizer & Moderna cant really fill the gap over the next 3 months so its AZ or bust because AZ have more ramp for volume. I will not be surprised if some factory somewhere in Europe that can manufacture active ingredient signs off with AZ similar to Sanofi with Pfizer thus providing a win that the EU has strengthened its own supply chain.
Maybe somebody should have watched Berlin. It made an agreement with Pfizer over the EUs head and went off and bought some of that expensive anti viral treatment. EU unity? my arse, they took matters into their own hands you assume because they saw things through their own eye and out their situation first.
What I'm saying is indisputable. Quite a few people have argued against things I am not saying, which is a nuisance but easily answered.
We should spend what it takes to roll out this vaccine quickly and effectively.
If AZ shots cost £3 (let's double it to £6 for global supply, distribution, delivery and roll-out costs) and we want to help 3 billion people - and I'll add 15% admin / management overhead on top of that for good measure - then the whole programme would be £21bn over 12 months (+/-20% MoE), and a one-off doubling of the international aid budget would do it.
I think it'd be packaged differently, however, because it's essentially an investment in rebooting the world economy and a bargain at twice the price.
https://twitter.com/DailyMailUK/status/1354497859073302528?s=20
https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1354267282743189505
If that is not what you are suggesting then why are so you focusing, HYUFD like, on a single sapect and not the wider situation?
Since others are talking about the future, and you are only talking about the past, that would mean you are also arguing against things people are not arguing.
The proof you're using is that, three weeks ago, the EU was three weeks behind the UK.
These are not equivalent.
The path between the two scenarios is very short. AZ digs its heels in, EU goes direct to UK Government and demands diversion of production, Johnson refuses, EU condemns UK for being selfish and blames us for their suffering (along with using this as an excuse to confiscate our Pfizer orders and use them itself to plug the gaps that its own lethargy has created.)
I'm not sure how far we can trust the Commission but I do think that they must be desperate. A serious confrontation cannot, presumably, be ruled out.
My entire argument has been that the data that is in so far shows a three week lag. Nothing more.
But yes we should certainly help out Ireland first, then anyone else who needs them. It’s in everyone’s interest for this damn thing to disappear as quickly as possible.