The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
I would also point out that Californian cases have collapsed, and we've done less well than ze Germans at getting vaccines in peoples' arms.
Ursula surely has to fall on her sword so we can all move on
?.....as far as been reported the EU still intend to count out every vaccine for export and potentially ban them for basically no reason beyond we don't think its fair.
Brussels has backed down from plans to impose export controls on vaccines that threatened the shipment of 3.5million Pfizer doses to Britain.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the assurance to Boris Johnson after announcing an extraordinary embargo on jabs leaving the bloc amid dwindling supplies on the Continent.
They are still *recording* the exports (which is in itself a veiled threat), but have said that companies delivering contracted doses will not be affected.
In other words, the EU managed to damage its reputation both with pharmaceutical companies and with an important ally, while not actually managing to increase the number of doses of vaccines it has.
A real win-win for the bloc.
Not sure where they are going to get some face saving done here. As you point out, the only goal was about increasing the number of doses it has, and they haven't yet managed to do that at all, let alone substantially. So is the goal now just to ignore their own ramping up of tensions until a week or two when supplies are expected to be better? They can then claim their efforts helped?
I suspect that the key thing has been Pfizer's deals with Sanofi and Novartis to manufacture CV19 vaccines. This bringing on of additional capacity (almost certainly in the EU) will make a massive difference to the quantity of vaccines available. Now, it probably won't happen until Q2, but I suspect the EU will be over the worst by June/July.
I don't know how quickly the Sanofi and Novartis deals will pay off though, I thought the Sanofi one wouldn't begin delivering until Q4.
I think the EU needs to get cracking with immediately deliverable vaccine ramp up, pay AZ whatever it needs to so it can increase its output at existing sites and if new sites are necessary then do that too.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
Around 130,000 people who are clinically extremely vulnerable to the coronavirus are being asked to keep shielding in Wales until the end of March.
Oh dear. I can see this being a prelude to forcing them to stay at home all the way until May. Twelve weeks after February 15th, to allow for the second jabs to be administered, takes us up to May 10th, by which point we can have a reasonable expectation that everyone over 50 will also have had the first shot.
I don't think people necessarily appreciate, unless they are shielding or know someone else in that position well, how difficult it is. You're instructed to go into that form of extreme isolation for a very long period, and not even excused if you're in work, because the Government has now instructed the extremely vulnerable not to go in. It's almost a form of imprisonment really.
Some UK Gov spokespeople have been having fun drafting these 'taking the high road' communications. 'No desire to block suppliers' sentence immediately followed by 'the world is watching', making a subtle dig.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
If the benefit of vaccinations start to become obvious in the numbers (and lack of restrictions) coming out of Israel and the UK I can imagine anti-vax sentiment all over Europe will disappear very quickly.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Having decided to go for joint procurement, which definitely gives advantages of scale and so forth they should have REALLY gone for it. New plants in places like Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and so on - a case of lots of Europe, tonnes of Europe. Production investment, cash up front; Sanofi, Novartis how much so you want ?! Not just paying for doses after delivery, simply ridiculous in the circumstances. An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
I think it has been shown, including in France, that willingness does indeed rise as rollout occurs. However, that does seem to bypass that for France the figure is a lot higher than in other places due, apparently, to some scandals in past years, and therefore not unreasonable to think that while not the full 40% are Wakefielders, a higher percentage than elsewhere will be.
Good his reports on AZ are not getting much play, which makes his pandering with some anti-UK red meat even more pointless.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
Regarding senior civil servants’ evidence under oath, only for the committee to “subsequently discover that it is nonsensical and so recall the witness”, he observes: “In Glasgow Sheriff Court, these witnesses would have been locked up for prevarication at least.”
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Having decided to go for joint procurement, which definitely gives advantages of scale and so forth they should have REALLY gone for it. New plants in places like Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and so on - a case of lots of Europe, tonnes of Europe. Production investment, cash up front; Sanofi, Novartis how much so you want ?! Not just paying for doses after delivery, simply ridiculous in the circumstances. An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
The other thing that was quite clear was that if Trump won in November, he'd have gone all vaccine nationalism/America First so it would have been in the EU's interest to invest in their own vaccine production.
I suppose another explanation is that they didn't expect a vaccine to appear, let alone several.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Having decided to go for joint procurement, which definitely gives advantages of scale and so forth they should have REALLY gone for it. New plants in places like Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and so on - a case of lots of Europe, tonnes of Europe. Production investment, cash up front; Sanofi, Novartis how much so you want ?! Not just paying for doses after delivery, simply ridiculous in the circumstances. An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
This is bloody awkward.
I do hope the Government doesn't yield both to its own apparent inclination and foot-stamping from the backbenches, and open the schools back up too early - especially the secondaries.
The Welsh are talking about starting to open some of the schools again just after half-term. Hopefully if their baby steps cause things to start to go to shit then the plug can be pulled in the rest of the country until much later in the vaccination scheme.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Having decided to go for joint procurement, which definitely gives advantages of scale and so forth they should have REALLY gone for it. New plants in places like Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and so on - a case of lots of Europe, tonnes of Europe. Production investment, cash up front; Sanofi, Novartis how much so you want ?! Not just paying for doses after delivery, simply ridiculous in the circumstances. An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
I agree in principle, in practice a scheme which starts subsidising industry with EU money becomes a nightmare of interminable arguments and negotiations of who gets what money and which companies get backed.
That would have made everything even worse IMO as they wouldn't have signed anything at all, nothing would have got built and they'd be even further behind in the queue for vaccines than they are now.
What are the chances that Rosindell's comms guy would have been a Remainer?! Just shows how open minded Brexiteers are and if we all get together behind vaccine nationalism, things will start getting better.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
I think it has been shown, including in France, that willingness does indeed rise as rollout occurs. However, that does seem to bypass that for France the figure is a lot higher than in other places due, apparently, to some scandals in past years, and therefore not unreasonable to think that while not the full 40% are Wakefielders, a higher percentage than elsewhere will be.
Good his reports on AZ are not getting much play, which makes his pandering with some anti-UK red meat even more pointless.
Yes definitely there is more of an underlying resistance, I have spoken to people here who surprised me with their caution about the vaccines. But I think that when vaccines finally do roll in France won’t want to find itself exiled from the rest of Europe and the world. Even Le Pen has said she will get vaccinated.
His comments were so completely irresponsible it’s hard to understand what was going through his head. Honestly surprised he said anything at all on this subject, as far as I can see he hadn’t actually been getting much flak for this latest vaccine scandal so far.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Having decided to go for joint procurement, which definitely gives advantages of scale and so forth they should have REALLY gone for it. New plants in places like Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and so on - a case of lots of Europe, tonnes of Europe. Production investment, cash up front; Sanofi, Novartis how much so you want ?! Not just paying for doses after delivery, simply ridiculous in the circumstances. An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
I agree, and it seems obvious now. As the middleman spending OPM perhaps they decided they'd be judged by how hard a bargain with Pharma they drove. Which they did. And in the absence of production shortfalls it might have looked like mission accomplished. But as it is, pants down, who's a clown.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely superspreaders.
That's good to know.
Still hope they aren't in too much of a hurry with the schools though.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
This is bloody awkward.
I do hope the Government doesn't yield both to its own apparent inclination and foot-stamping from the backbenches, and open the schools back up too early - especially the secondaries.
The Welsh are talking about starting to open some of the schools again just after half-term. Hopefully if their baby steps cause things to start to go to shit then the plug can be pulled in the rest of the country until much later in the vaccination scheme.
Quite. Rumour has it Boris has decreed this must be the last lockdown, so the logic says it must go on until cases are below 500 a day, and the vast bulk of the adult population has had one jab. Whether that is April or later, we will reap the benefit later.
What are the chances that Rosindell's comms guy would have been a Remainer?! Just shows how open minded Brexiteers are and if we all get together behind vaccine nationalism, things will start getting better.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
Ursula surely has to fall on her sword so we can all move on
?.....as far as been reported the EU still intend to count out every vaccine for export and potentially ban them for basically no reason beyond we don't think its fair.
Brussels has backed down from plans to impose export controls on vaccines that threatened the shipment of 3.5million Pfizer doses to Britain.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the assurance to Boris Johnson after announcing an extraordinary embargo on jabs leaving the bloc amid dwindling supplies on the Continent.
They are still *recording* the exports (which is in itself a veiled threat), but have said that companies delivering contracted doses will not be affected.
In other words, the EU managed to damage its reputation both with pharmaceutical companies and with an important ally, while not actually managing to increase the number of doses of vaccines it has.
A real win-win for the bloc.
Not sure where they are going to get some face saving done here. As you point out, the only goal was about increasing the number of doses it has, and they haven't yet managed to do that at all, let alone substantially. So is the goal now just to ignore their own ramping up of tensions until a week or two when supplies are expected to be better? They can then claim their efforts helped?
I suspect that the key thing has been Pfizer's deals with Sanofi and Novartis to manufacture CV19 vaccines. This bringing on of additional capacity (almost certainly in the EU) will make a massive difference to the quantity of vaccines available. Now, it probably won't happen until Q2, but I suspect the EU will be over the worst by June/July.
I don't know how quickly the Sanofi and Novartis deals will pay off though, I thought the Sanofi one wouldn't begin delivering until Q4.
I think the EU needs to get cracking with immediately deliverable vaccine ramp up, pay AZ whatever it needs to so it can increase its output at existing sites and if new sites are necessary then do that too.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
I would bet you that both Sanofi and Novartis will start delivering vaccines in Q2.
Absolutely correct what others are saying on here re schools. We appear to be making real progress now in reducing cases. Schools being closed is a real part of that. If they open too early it could take us backwards.
Let's wait until after Easter when hopefully the top 9 groups will have been vaccinated and in most part will have some immunity.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
Ursula surely has to fall on her sword so we can all move on
?.....as far as been reported the EU still intend to count out every vaccine for export and potentially ban them for basically no reason beyond we don't think its fair.
Brussels has backed down from plans to impose export controls on vaccines that threatened the shipment of 3.5million Pfizer doses to Britain.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the assurance to Boris Johnson after announcing an extraordinary embargo on jabs leaving the bloc amid dwindling supplies on the Continent.
They are still *recording* the exports (which is in itself a veiled threat), but have said that companies delivering contracted doses will not be affected.
In other words, the EU managed to damage its reputation both with pharmaceutical companies and with an important ally, while not actually managing to increase the number of doses of vaccines it has.
A real win-win for the bloc.
Not sure where they are going to get some face saving done here. As you point out, the only goal was about increasing the number of doses it has, and they haven't yet managed to do that at all, let alone substantially. So is the goal now just to ignore their own ramping up of tensions until a week or two when supplies are expected to be better? They can then claim their efforts helped?
I suspect that the key thing has been Pfizer's deals with Sanofi and Novartis to manufacture CV19 vaccines. This bringing on of additional capacity (almost certainly in the EU) will make a massive difference to the quantity of vaccines available. Now, it probably won't happen until Q2, but I suspect the EU will be over the worst by June/July.
I don't know how quickly the Sanofi and Novartis deals will pay off though, I thought the Sanofi one wouldn't begin delivering until Q4.
I think the EU needs to get cracking with immediately deliverable vaccine ramp up, pay AZ whatever it needs to so it can increase its output at existing sites and if new sites are necessary then do that too.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
I would bet you that both Sanofi and Novartis will start delivering vaccines in Q2.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
But in other lockdowns we've seen the opposite effect where the initial drop is larger and the rate of contraction decelerates as people become more relaxed, meet their friends and break various lockdown rules.
I think one of the reasons Israel hasn't seen its case rate drop is because their testing system proactively goes and finds people rather than waiting for people to develop symptoms and then get tested as we do in the UK or US.
I think the key statistic for vaccines is the over 65s hospitalisation rate and we can see a disproportionate drop in those groups as well now.
The case drop in this lockdown isn't following the same pattern as any other, it's getting faster.
It feels a bit like we're in the same place as those physicists and mathematicians who thought the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down and then had those theories smashed up by observational data showing that it's speeding up. We've got to keep watching and hope that we really are helping to stop symptomatic spread of the virus.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
How about Barnier to replace Macron if Macron really screws up or people tire of a disrupter and want an adult safe pair of hands like Barnier. Barnier looks like a president too. It would be the Trump/Biden show again.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
But in other lockdowns we've seen the opposite effect where the initial drop is larger and the rate of contraction decelerates as people become more relaxed, meet their friends and break various lockdown rules.
I think one of the reasons Israel hasn't seen its case rate drop is because their testing system proactively goes and finds people rather than waiting for people to develop symptoms and then get tested as we do in the UK or US.
I think the key statistic for vaccines is the over 65s hospitalisation rate and we can see a disproportionate drop in those groups as well now.
The case drop in this lockdown isn't following the same pattern as any other, it's getting faster.
It feels a bit like we're in the same place as those physicists and mathematicians who thought the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down and then had those theories smashed up by observational data showing that it's speeding up. We've got to keep watching and hope that we really are helping to stop symptomatic spread of the virus.
Israel has also had a big problem with people getting their first jab and immediately reconvening Friday night dinner.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
How about Barnier to replace Macron if Macron really screws up or people tire of a disrupter and want an adult safe pair of hands like Barnier. Barnier looks like a president too. It would be the Trump/Biden show again.
The European Parliament would be well advised to get the 60% needed to kick out UvdL and replace her with Barnier.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
What do you make of
On a log scale, the reductions all look much of a muchness.
I don't doubt that vaccines are helping drive cases down. I'm just pointing out that they are not the only (or even the dominant) factor.
Ursula surely has to fall on her sword so we can all move on
?.....as far as been reported the EU still intend to count out every vaccine for export and potentially ban them for basically no reason beyond we don't think its fair.
Brussels has backed down from plans to impose export controls on vaccines that threatened the shipment of 3.5million Pfizer doses to Britain.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made the assurance to Boris Johnson after announcing an extraordinary embargo on jabs leaving the bloc amid dwindling supplies on the Continent.
They are still *recording* the exports (which is in itself a veiled threat), but have said that companies delivering contracted doses will not be affected.
In other words, the EU managed to damage its reputation both with pharmaceutical companies and with an important ally, while not actually managing to increase the number of doses of vaccines it has.
A real win-win for the bloc.
Not sure where they are going to get some face saving done here. As you point out, the only goal was about increasing the number of doses it has, and they haven't yet managed to do that at all, let alone substantially. So is the goal now just to ignore their own ramping up of tensions until a week or two when supplies are expected to be better? They can then claim their efforts helped?
I suspect that the key thing has been Pfizer's deals with Sanofi and Novartis to manufacture CV19 vaccines. This bringing on of additional capacity (almost certainly in the EU) will make a massive difference to the quantity of vaccines available. Now, it probably won't happen until Q2, but I suspect the EU will be over the worst by June/July.
I don't know how quickly the Sanofi and Novartis deals will pay off though, I thought the Sanofi one wouldn't begin delivering until Q4.
I think the EU needs to get cracking with immediately deliverable vaccine ramp up, pay AZ whatever it needs to so it can increase its output at existing sites and if new sites are necessary then do that too.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
I would bet you that both Sanofi and Novartis will start delivering vaccines in Q2.
£100 bet?
Depends on how you define "deliveries". I few thousand doses per day from a pilot production process or 2-4m per week?
Even so, I agree that the publicly stated schedules are definitely incorporating a lot of downside risk so governments don't overpromise. I think they've learned from AZ and Pfizer doing the same and getting loads of shit for it despite ramping up capacity at absolutely phenomenal rates in absolute terms.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Having decided to go for joint procurement, which definitely gives advantages of scale and so forth they should have REALLY gone for it. New plants in places like Poland, Slovakia, Portugal and so on - a case of lots of Europe, tonnes of Europe. Production investment, cash up front; Sanofi, Novartis how much so you want ?! Not just paying for doses after delivery, simply ridiculous in the circumstances. An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
I agree in principle, in practice a scheme which starts subsidising industry with EU money becomes a nightmare of interminable arguments and negotiations of who gets what money and which companies get backed.
That would have made everything even worse IMO as they wouldn't have signed anything at all, nothing would have got built and they'd be even further behind in the queue for vaccines than they are now.
Maybe, but there are ways around that. You could say that you would count the subsidies as part of the Covid Relief fund, so a country that had no investment for vaccine production would receive more of the Covid Relief funding as a balancing mechanism.
There are always ways around problems. The key problem is that they have crap people in charge who aren't capable of solving those problems.
We're not that much better off in the UK. Johnson's government has done almost everything wrong on Covid, and we can't replace him until 2024. But the EU is currently making his record look a bit better.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
But in other lockdowns we've seen the opposite effect where the initial drop is larger and the rate of contraction decelerates as people become more relaxed, meet their friends and break various lockdown rules.
I think one of the reasons Israel hasn't seen its case rate drop is because their testing system proactively goes and finds people rather than waiting for people to develop symptoms and then get tested as we do in the UK or US.
I think the key statistic for vaccines is the over 65s hospitalisation rate and we can see a disproportionate drop in those groups as well now.
The case drop in this lockdown isn't following the same pattern as any other, it's getting faster.
It feels a bit like we're in the same place as those physicists and mathematicians who thought the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down and then had those theories smashed up by observational data showing that it's speeding up. We've got to keep watching and hope that we really are helping to stop symptomatic spread of the virus.
The only possible other explanation I can come up with is the weather. It may be keeping folk at home? Speculative I know.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
How about Barnier to replace Macron if Macron really screws up or people tire of a disrupter and want an adult safe pair of hands like Barnier. Barnier looks like a president too. It would be the Trump/Biden show again.
The European Parliament would be well advised to get the 60% needed to kick out UvdL and replace her with Barnier.
Agreed.
And agreeing with the sentiments of this header, and several posters below. I suspect Macron is going to struggle to gain re-election too.
The situation for Le Pen has never looked riper...
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
I'm sure the vaccinations are helping. But don't forget that the number of cases you see now are from people infected two weeks ago. And the number of vaccinations you see include people for whom the vaccine has yet to have any effect.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
But in other lockdowns we've seen the opposite effect where the initial drop is larger and the rate of contraction decelerates as people become more relaxed, meet their friends and break various lockdown rules.
I think one of the reasons Israel hasn't seen its case rate drop is because their testing system proactively goes and finds people rather than waiting for people to develop symptoms and then get tested as we do in the UK or US.
I think the key statistic for vaccines is the over 65s hospitalisation rate and we can see a disproportionate drop in those groups as well now.
The case drop in this lockdown isn't following the same pattern as any other, it's getting faster.
It feels a bit like we're in the same place as those physicists and mathematicians who thought the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down and then had those theories smashed up by observational data showing that it's speeding up. We've got to keep watching and hope that we really are helping to stop symptomatic spread of the virus.
I hope Robert's interpretation is correct and the vaccines prove as effective in the mass vaccination programme as they have in the trials, because if both are true, we should see even faster falls in a few weeks to far more bearable levels.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
Absolutely correct what others are saying on here re schools. We appear to be making real progress now in reducing cases. Schools being closed is a real part of that. If they open too early it could take us backwards.
Let's wait until after Easter when hopefully the top 9 groups will have been vaccinated and in most part will have some immunity.
At a broad estimate, if we keep doing as well as we are now then we should be able to get phase one done by Easter, which would mean the last of those people would've reached their three weeks post-jab marker by about the end of that month.
It would probably be a good idea to leave the schools until that point, although frankly I'd rather they only let the primaries go back and wrote the secondaries off until September.
That is, hopefully the accumulation of the partially completed vaccination program and warmer weather will mean pretty effective suppression all over the Summer, but imagine the Government had to contemplate another bloody lockdown? People would give up in despair.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
Ireland's peak in case numbers was higher, but they didn't have so many deaths. Either their testing is a lot more comprehensive, or the Brazilian variant in Portugal is more deadly, or something else is going on.
A bit much being made of France being full of anti vaxxers. 40% of the country are not Wakefield supporting nut jobs worried that the vaccine will be injecting 5G into their veins. The attitude is more one of 'no, you first', a bit of a shitty attitude perhaps but as it becomes clearer that there's no issues that anti vax sentiment will melt away.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
How about Barnier to replace Macron if Macron really screws up or people tire of a disrupter and want an adult safe pair of hands like Barnier. Barnier looks like a president too. It would be the Trump/Biden show again.
The European Parliament would be well advised to get the 60% needed to kick out UvdL and replace her with Barnier.
Agreed.
And agreeing with the sentiments of this header, and several posters below. I suspect Macron is going to struggle to gain re-election too.
The situation for Le Pen has never looked riper...
She's also moved her policy positions much more to the centre than previously, to the extent of purging her father from the party, giving pro-EU speeches (it must be a Christian club and a bulwark against Islam, now) and getting rid of lots of people with more fringe views.
I'd argue that MLP is quite a lot less right wing that the Northern League now.
Hmm. I feel like developers will hate that, and public likewarm (since generally they just don't want any houses built anyway, except in theory), but then developers complain about everything to do with planning anyway.
Absolutely correct what others are saying on here re schools. We appear to be making real progress now in reducing cases. Schools being closed is a real part of that. If they open too early it could take us backwards.
Let's wait until after Easter when hopefully the top 9 groups will have been vaccinated and in most part will have some immunity.
At a broad estimate, if we keep doing as well as we are now then we should be able to get phase one done by Easter, which would mean the last of those people would've reached their three weeks post-jab marker by about the end of that month.
It would probably be a good idea to leave the schools until that point, although frankly I'd rather they only let the primaries go back and wrote the secondaries off until September.
That is, hopefully the accumulation of the partially completed vaccination program and warmer weather will mean pretty effective suppression all over the Summer, but imagine the Government had to contemplate another bloody lockdown? People would give up in despair.
One would hope that the UK will approve both J&J and Novavax in the next 2-3 weeks. Indeed, the speed at which we've approved vaccines so far has been fantastic, and I really hope we'll keep this up.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely superspreaders.
That's good to know.
Still hope they aren't in too much of a hurry with the schools though.
The schools are a major problem, if the graphs from NI are any indication the clincher on that was the extended mid term break where things flattened out briefly then as soon as the kids went back up it went. The counter to this is that my understanding is that amount of kids who are still physically going into school buildings is much higher than back April/May last year.
Ideally they'd wait until after the early Easter and hope that come April the impact of people coming out of winter hibernation opening the windows and so on, which they suggest does keep infection rates down, can help things a bit. Given a choice though between crushing large parts of the economy to have schools back it'd be no contest if it was me, get the economy more open.
Hmm. I feel like developers will hate that, and public likewarm (since generally they just don't want any houses built anyway, except in theory), but then developers complain about everything to do with planning anyway.
I detest Jenrick but that is a really good idea. I suppose even corrupt idiots can get things right once in a while.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
It is also interesting that the weekly rate of decrease in positive tests in London, Essex and Kent has likewise accelerated, from 23-30% a week ago to 40% for all three now.
But the EU is currently making his record look a bit better.
A bit?
Yes. A bit. We're still well ahead of the EU as a whole when it comes to per capita deaths. Doing well on the vaccines does not wholly compensate for a vast litany of wrongheadedness.
Has any great institution ever destroyed its credibility so quickly, and so pointlessly, and so completely, as the EU in the last five days?
I think that after a successful Brexit and with some new youngsters at the helm, who've only ever had it easy, elements of the EU rather sat on their laurels. But as a good friend of mine always says, 'It's not ideal when you've only ever known success; sometimes it benefits to feel a bit of draught.' So after a somewhat chastening few days the EU will be back - wiser, nimbler, fitter, stronger.
Not sure how you can judge a scenario to be undesirable when it never happened. Arguably the rollout might have benefitted from Boris's golden touch - then both the UK and EU would be sitting pretty. We'll never know.
Not sure why you aimed that at me - I was indulging in a bit of British exceptionalism.
One thing I've noticed from having a bit more of a window on media continent-side due to the Handelsblatt thing and the general kerfuffle, is the degree of genuine German exceptionalism that appears to abound. It reminded of me trips to Germany and a particular chat I had referencing German cars vs. Japanese cars - the German protagonist not arguing that German cars were better (understandable) but that Japanese cars were shit and it was a pity anyone got conned into buying one. I believe Germany has an unshaken view of its own superiority in matters technical that is over and above that which is supported by the facts. Now, I completely appreciate that Germany has a fantastic manufacturing and chemical industry, and that many (if not most) of their well-known brands have quality as a feature. However, what I'm talking about is more of an infallible belief that something is better merely *because* it is German. You can see it in the sneering from the German MEP about the UK taking delivery of 'very good German vaccine' etc. It seems to be the Germans that are the most bothered about the UK 'winning' the vaccine race.
As for British exceptionalism, of course it was a real thing, but I think the shit got well and truly kicked out of that post-Suez. As a matter of fact, I think most Brits believe that if something is British, it's more likely to be a huge cock up or a disappointment. I think there was a brief resurgence in faith in our 'world-beating military', lasting from The Falklands to Basra, but I think that's probably pretty well drained now too.
Hmm. I feel like developers will hate that, and public likewarm (since generally they just don't want any houses built anyway, except in theory), but then developers complain about everything to do with planning anyway.
I detest Jenrick but that is a really good idea. I suppose even corrupt idiots can get things right once in a while.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
Has any great institution ever destroyed its credibility so quickly, and so pointlessly, and so completely, as the EU in the last five days?
Yes. Suez.
Suez never had a great reputation.
I think it had a bit of regard in the canal world.
Due to it being dug a bit shallow, steering large ships on the canal is somewhere between erratic and impossible. This has, according to some ships captains I used to work with, increased the cross-culture movement of swear words considerably.
Not sure how you can judge a scenario to be undesirable when it never happened. Arguably the rollout might have benefitted from Boris's golden touch - then both the UK and EU would be sitting pretty. We'll never know.
Not sure why you aimed that at me - I was indulging in a bit of British exceptionalism.
One thing I've noticed from having a bit more of a window on media continent-side due to the Handelsblatt thing and the general kerfuffle, is the degree of genuine German exceptionalism that appears to abound. It reminded of me trips to Germany and a particular chat I had referencing German cars vs. Japanese cars - the German protagonist not arguing that German cars were better (understandable) but that Japanese cars were shit and it was a pity anyone got conned into buying one. I believe Germany has an unshaken view of its own superiority in matters technical that is over and above that which is supported by the facts. Now, I completely appreciate that Germany has a fantastic manufacturing and chemical industry, and that many (if not most) of their well-known brands have quality as a feature. However, what I'm talking about is more of an infallible belief that something is better merely *because* it is German. You can see it in the sneering from the German MEP about the UK taking delivery of 'very good German vaccine' etc. It seems to be the Germans that are the most bothered about the UK 'winning' the vaccine race.
As for British exceptionalism, of course it was a real thing, but I think the shit got well and truly kicked out of that post-Suez. As a matter of fact, I think most Brits believe that if something is British, it's more likely to be a huge cock up or a disappointment. I think there was a brief resurgence in faith in our 'world-beating military', lasting from The Falklands to Basra, but I think that's probably pretty well drained now too.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
I would also point out that Californian cases have collapsed, and we've done less well than ze Germans at getting vaccines in peoples' arms.
Indeed, Robert, but the pro-Johnson lobby on here won't hear a word of it.
I'm much more of the view the fall in case numbers (I note another poor day of fatalities) is the result of restrictions as it was back in the spring. With the closure of schools, a big source of transmission has gone and with the recent unpleasant weather, there's much less incentive to go out and about unlike in the spring when the weather was capriciously fine and sunny for days on end (it seemed).
This morning, East Ham High Street was very quiet for a Saturday morning with mask wearing in shops well supported though not universal in smaller premises. Travel numbers in London also suggest a lot of people staying safe and warm at home.
I'm not saying vaccination isn't correct or the way out of this - far from it - but many of those who have been vaccinated were already shielding.
As for vaccination, my anecdotal evidence is of growing inconsistencies across the country with some areas now down to the 60s age groups and others still struggling to vaccinate much older people. The overall numbers, as always, only tell part of a more complex tale.
Absolutely correct what others are saying on here re schools. We appear to be making real progress now in reducing cases. Schools being closed is a real part of that. If they open too early it could take us backwards.
Let's wait until after Easter when hopefully the top 9 groups will have been vaccinated and in most part will have some immunity.
At a broad estimate, if we keep doing as well as we are now then we should be able to get phase one done by Easter, which would mean the last of those people would've reached their three weeks post-jab marker by about the end of that month.
It would probably be a good idea to leave the schools until that point, although frankly I'd rather they only let the primaries go back and wrote the secondaries off until September.
That is, hopefully the accumulation of the partially completed vaccination program and warmer weather will mean pretty effective suppression all over the Summer, but imagine the Government had to contemplate another bloody lockdown? People would give up in despair.
One would hope that the UK will approve both J&J and Novavax in the next 2-3 weeks. Indeed, the speed at which we've approved vaccines so far has been fantastic, and I really hope we'll keep this up.
(Question: has Moderna been approved in the UK?)
Moderna - yes. Novavax - it will be measured in months, not weeks. They've applied for a rolling review process which is great but they've said the final submission as part of this won't be ready until the end of Feb at the earliest assuming current rates of infection keep up. Volume deliveries expected in early April, which is also around the time we should get it approved. J&J - weeks, though they are talking about H2 for non-US volume deliveries, which I'm sure is a worst case scenario.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
Ireland's peak in case numbers was higher, but they didn't have so many deaths. Either their testing is a lot more comprehensive, or the Brazilian variant in Portugal is more deadly, or something else is going on.
I have friends in Portugal who tell me that observation of social distancing, etc, was basically non-existent until recently. Now they are scared and taking it seriously. But a bit late.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
I would also point out that Californian cases have collapsed, and we've done less well than ze Germans at getting vaccines in peoples' arms.
Indeed, Robert, but the pro-Johnson lobby on here won't hear a word of it.
I'm much more of the view the fall in case numbers (I note another poor day of fatalities) is the result of restrictions as it was back in the spring. With the closure of schools, a big source of transmission has gone and with the recent unpleasant weather, there's much less incentive to go out and about unlike in the spring when the weather was capriciously fine and sunny for days on end (it seemed).
This morning, East Ham High Street was very quiet for a Saturday morning with mask wearing in shops well supported though not universal in smaller premises. Travel numbers in London also suggest a lot of people staying safe and warm at home.
I'm not saying vaccination isn't correct or the way out of this - far from it - but many of those who have been vaccinated were already shielding.
As for vaccination, my anecdotal evidence is of growing inconsistencies across the country with some areas now down to the 60s age groups and others still struggling to vaccinate much older people. The overall numbers, as always, only tell part of a more complex tale.
Not everything people say is defined by their views on Johnson, I don't know why you often insist that is the case, it's just strange.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
It is also interesting that the weekly rate of decrease in positive tests in London, Essex and Kent has likewise accelerated, from 23-30% a week ago to 40% for all three now.
Yes, I can't come up with many other ways to close that gap. A huge reduction in hospital transmission due to herd immunity among the people who work in them. I hope that the PHE infection source study confirms this.
Absolutely correct what others are saying on here re schools. We appear to be making real progress now in reducing cases. Schools being closed is a real part of that. If they open too early it could take us backwards.
Let's wait until after Easter when hopefully the top 9 groups will have been vaccinated and in most part will have some immunity.
At a broad estimate, if we keep doing as well as we are now then we should be able to get phase one done by Easter, which would mean the last of those people would've reached their three weeks post-jab marker by about the end of that month.
It would probably be a good idea to leave the schools until that point, although frankly I'd rather they only let the primaries go back and wrote the secondaries off until September.
That is, hopefully the accumulation of the partially completed vaccination program and warmer weather will mean pretty effective suppression all over the Summer, but imagine the Government had to contemplate another bloody lockdown? People would give up in despair.
(Question: has Moderna been approved in the UK?)
Yes but originally very little bought and delivery not until April I think.
Novovax has been working with MHRA on its submission since mid Jan,so I'd expect approval before J&J. Not sure about its delivery date though. I've heard March but that seems very slack.
The decline in cases is fantastic. We should be below the level it was at the end of the December lockdown within a week or so if the rate continues. I can't believe how steep the slope on the graph is.
Yes once again the rate of decrease is accelerating. It really feels like a vaccine related success, there's no other way to explain fewer cases despite lockdown conditions remaining stable.
Hang on. No schools is a massive driver.
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
Yes but that's been constant during this lockdown, it's not as if they've suddenly closed them to help bring the R down further.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
It is also interesting that the weekly rate of decrease in positive tests in London, Essex and Kent has likewise accelerated, from 23-30% a week ago to 40% for all three now.
Yes, I can't come up with many other ways to close that gap. A huge reduction in hospital transmission due to herd immunity among the people who work in them. I hope that the PHE infection source study confirms this.
Do we have any numbers on the percentage of NHS staff ( frontline and other ) that have had at least one jab? Must be pretty high by now.
I haven't seen any US-wide party polling since Trump's assault on the capitol?
Nor have I - but Biden is certainly on a roll - 59-32 in the latest non-Rasmussen poll (even Rasmussen gives him +5). The Georgia figures certainly look unpromising for the GOP more generally as it's now the archetypal swing state.
ICUs were “actually operating at typical occupation levels for the time of year”, Desmond bullshitted, and the UK was “bouncing round at the typical level of deaths for the time of year”. The sort of claim that typically sparks two questions. 1. Have you recently suffered a blunt-force head trauma? 2. Would you like to?
Comments
Don't forget that Israel's case load is falling much more slowly than us,
From case data
Form hospitalisations
I think the EU needs to get cracking with immediately deliverable vaccine ramp up, pay AZ whatever it needs to so it can increase its output at existing sites and if new sites are necessary then do that too.
There's been a huge over reliance on the markets for this and their stance of price bargaining means there is inevitably a much lower level of capital investment going into the supply chain associated with EU destined doses.
I still can't understand why a bloc of nations with GDP of $14tn was so determined to save money on vaccine procurement. It's as if not a single person understands opportunity cost.
Strangely I can't find any coverage of Macron's trumpian outburst in the news here.
No idea what will happen in 2022 but my guess is that it will be a rerun of last time. The left is pretty moribund still. Melenchon has lost a lot of his flair since last time. On the right Macron and Le Pen already divide up a big chunk of their voters and hard to see an LR candidate having much to pull from either one. Macron is governing as a centre right president in every aspect already.
I don't think people necessarily appreciate, unless they are shielding or know someone else in that position well, how difficult it is. You're instructed to go into that form of extreme isolation for a very long period, and not even excused if you're in work, because the Government has now instructed the extremely vulnerable not to go in. It's almost a form of imprisonment really.
Love the passive aggressive understated politeness. Best way to deal with this act of temporary insanity.
An EU procurement scheme was fine, the implementation has been simply shocking.
Good his reports on AZ are not getting much play, which makes his pandering with some anti-UK red meat even more pointless.
There's no other explanation for the case contraction rate going from ~20% and holding steady two weeks ago to ~30% today. That acceleration must have come from somewhere and the only new thing we've added to the mix is the vaccination programme which has reached 2.3m people partially or fully immunised, with the latter group weighted to medical staff who have always been likely susperspreaders.
Regarding senior civil servants’ evidence under oath, only for the committee to “subsequently discover that it is nonsensical and so recall the witness”, he observes: “In Glasgow Sheriff Court, these witnesses would have been locked up for prevarication at least.”
I suppose another explanation is that they didn't expect a vaccine to appear, let alone several.
I do hope the Government doesn't yield both to its own apparent inclination and foot-stamping from the backbenches, and open the schools back up too early - especially the secondaries.
The Welsh are talking about starting to open some of the schools again just after half-term. Hopefully if their baby steps cause things to start to go to shit then the plug can be pulled in the rest of the country until much later in the vaccination scheme.
That would have made everything even worse IMO as they wouldn't have signed anything at all, nothing would have got built and they'd be even further behind in the queue for vaccines than they are now.
https://twitter.com/Otto_English/status/1355521948239998976?s=20
His comments were so completely irresponsible it’s hard to understand what was going through his head. Honestly surprised he said anything at all on this subject, as far as I can see he hadn’t actually been getting much flak for this latest vaccine scandal so far.
Still hope they aren't in too much of a hurry with the schools though.
https://twitter.com/PoliticsReid/status/1355557431959552002
https://twitter.com/MC0wbell/status/1355524346413002757
Macron visits French doctor behind hydroxychloroquine coronavirus 'cure' touted by Trump
https://www.france24.com/en/20200409-macron-visits-marseille-doctor-behind-virus-cure-touted-by-trump
Most unfair.
So I doubt it's had that big an effect. Remember: (a) two weeks ago California had only vaccinated about three quarters of a million people, and they've seen their case load fall as fast as the UK's. And (b) Israel has vaccinated more than a third of their population (and all with Pfizer) and their case load has fallen slower than the UK's or Californias.
There are natural waves with this thing, as people change their behaviour and as restrictions come and go.
£100 bet?
Let's wait until after Easter when hopefully the top 9 groups will have been vaccinated and in most part will have some immunity.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/29/nationalism-vaccine-mutation-uk-eu
That looks...ill judged to say the least.
I think one of the reasons Israel hasn't seen its case rate drop is because their testing system proactively goes and finds people rather than waiting for people to develop symptoms and then get tested as we do in the UK or US.
I think the key statistic for vaccines is the over 65s hospitalisation rate and we can see a disproportionate drop in those groups as well now.
The case drop in this lockdown isn't following the same pattern as any other, it's getting faster.
It feels a bit like we're in the same place as those physicists and mathematicians who thought the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down and then had those theories smashed up by observational data showing that it's speeding up. We've got to keep watching and hope that we really are helping to stop symptomatic spread of the virus.
Desmond Swayne
It's hard for me take either of them seriously about anything ever again, given their extraordinary resistance to facts.
I don't doubt that vaccines are helping drive cases down. I'm just pointing out that they are not the only (or even the dominant) factor.
Even so, I agree that the publicly stated schedules are definitely incorporating a lot of downside risk so governments don't overpromise. I think they've learned from AZ and Pfizer doing the same and getting loads of shit for it despite ramping up capacity at absolutely phenomenal rates in absolute terms.
There are always ways around problems. The key problem is that they have crap people in charge who aren't capable of solving those problems.
We're not that much better off in the UK. Johnson's government has done almost everything wrong on Covid, and we can't replace him until 2024. But the EU is currently making his record look a bit better.
And agreeing with the sentiments of this header, and several posters below. I suspect Macron is going to struggle to gain re-election too.
The situation for Le Pen has never looked riper...
It's a dogma, but if you have to have a dogma...
https://twitter.com/RobertJenrick/status/1355502376338264065
The only reason not to invest is, well, timing. Macron might continue to lengthen.
It would probably be a good idea to leave the schools until that point, although frankly I'd rather they only let the primaries go back and wrote the secondaries off until September.
That is, hopefully the accumulation of the partially completed vaccination program and warmer weather will mean pretty effective suppression all over the Summer, but imagine the Government had to contemplate another bloody lockdown? People would give up in despair.
I'd argue that MLP is quite a lot less right wing that the Northern League now.
(Question: has Moderna been approved in the UK?)
Ideally they'd wait until after the early Easter and hope that come April the impact of people coming out of winter hibernation opening the windows and so on, which they suggest does keep infection rates down, can help things a bit. Given a choice though between crushing large parts of the economy to have schools back it'd be no contest if it was me, get the economy more open.
As for British exceptionalism, of course it was a real thing, but I think the shit got well and truly kicked out of that post-Suez. As a matter of fact, I think most Brits believe that if something is British, it's more likely to be a huge cock up or a disappointment. I think there was a brief resurgence in faith in our 'world-beating military', lasting from The Falklands to Basra, but I think that's probably pretty well drained now too.
I'm much more of the view the fall in case numbers (I note another poor day of fatalities) is the result of restrictions as it was back in the spring. With the closure of schools, a big source of transmission has gone and with the recent unpleasant weather, there's much less incentive to go out and about unlike in the spring when the weather was capriciously fine and sunny for days on end (it seemed).
This morning, East Ham High Street was very quiet for a Saturday morning with mask wearing in shops well supported though not universal in smaller premises. Travel numbers in London also suggest a lot of people staying safe and warm at home.
I'm not saying vaccination isn't correct or the way out of this - far from it - but many of those who have been vaccinated were already shielding.
As for vaccination, my anecdotal evidence is of growing inconsistencies across the country with some areas now down to the 60s age groups and others still struggling to vaccinate much older people. The overall numbers, as always, only tell part of a more complex tale.
Novavax - it will be measured in months, not weeks. They've applied for a rolling review process which is great but they've said the final submission as part of this won't be ready until the end of Feb at the earliest assuming current rates of infection keep up. Volume deliveries expected in early April, which is also around the time we should get it approved.
J&J - weeks, though they are talking about H2 for non-US volume deliveries, which I'm sure is a worst case scenario.
Novovax has been working with MHRA on its submission since mid Jan,so I'd expect approval before J&J. Not sure about its delivery date though. I've heard March but that seems very slack.