Was the lifting of lockdown in December only bad in retrospect as we didn't understand the new strain. Surely different decisions would be made on models that included for a R rate of 1.7 compared to one
I think we can clearly see the uptick in September when Universities go back, and by November we clearly knew that the R rate was high; the "why" is not as relevant as the fact that it was. To that point, though, we also had strong indicators that this was because of new mutations, though we hadn't characterized by exactly how much they were contributing.
There were many voices calling for this from late September onwards, and they were right. The "hindsight" narrative is a straw man put up by the Government to cover its backside that sadly seems to have got some traction.
Schools in September, universities in October, perhaps? Christmas was odd because the relaxation was heavily trailed but just a couple of days before Christmas, arrangements were made less free, and I suspect a lot of the widely-publicised breaches were because people had not even noticed the late change.
Australian Open boss Craig Tiley says he is "absolutely confident" the Grand Slam will start as planned on Monday,
The way its going they will have to play matches via putting up a net in the corridor of the quarantine hotel and have them play rallies by hit the ball out of their room doors.
I wondered when the issue of international nature of the vaccine supply chain would come up next - it's not just the vaccines, it the precursor chemicals, equipment......
@Pagan2 - Thank you for that message. I know it is long but you should post it here; it was well thought out.
I don't agree with it all, but that doesn't matter because it is a start and a much more detailed one than I came up with. No doubt it will get torn apart by others on here, after all that is what we do and I have done it to you recently, but I thought it an excellent document for discussion.
In particular your point 3 (I know nobody else knows what we are talking about) is something I have thought about a lot and have a different solution to, but which I agree with completely. We have a situation in this country where we avoid passing laws because they are not perfect (loopholes, or catch out people who haven't done anything wrong but fail the jobs worth test) or pass laws that then get applied where they shouldn't be (eg the jobs worth who tells you 'but that is the law').
Go on post it Pagan.
I am not convinced this forum or the participants want a long discussion on political reform to be fair, yes possibly a subset do. Perhaps I will find another way to do it so only those interested get it inflicted
Header?
I would be very interested to read a header from @Pagan2 on this subject.
I will think about writing it up properly then up to Mike, though be warned I am not much of a writer and MysticRose will complain its too long and not about betting
Looking forward to it. Take no notice of MysticRose.
Good advice.
'Methinks the Lady doth protest too much'.
Someone who starts their posts "I'm not a Boris fan but...." is bound to raise an eyebrow. 'A Rose were it not a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet'
I wondered when the issue of international nature of the vaccine supply chain would come up next - it's not just the vaccines, it the precursor chemicals, equipment......
I think the Novavax is due to be made here but packed in the EU?
On topic, the deaths are a tragedy - let there be no doubt about that, whatsoever - and with swifter decisions by the Government the death toll now might "only" be in the 65-75,000 range rather than at the 108,000 mark. But, it'd never have been zero; this going to be a global catastrophe as soon as the virus got loose.
However, let there be no mistake: that's not what this thread header is really about; it's about the author wanting the Prime Minister gone because of his role in Brexit and as cheerleader for Brexit - nothing more, nothing less. Covid is merely a useful stick to beat him with. If there was any doubt about that the mentioning of Dan Hannan gives it away.
I will mourn with close friends of mine who've experienced personal tragedy, advocate policies that help us rebuild and mitigate the long-term effects on our children and young people, and I will do what I can to influence the policy debate to see that such a calamity never visits us again.
But, I don't have much time for emotional blackmail and cheap politics - and I say that as someone who didn't want Boris for PM in the first place, and still don't think he's up to the job.
By your own estimate is an avoidable death toll of 30,000 to 40,000. Now, what do you think should be done about a government responsible for such an appalling death toll?
Answers not including the word Brexit would be much appreciated.
The Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-9 led to 30-40,000 excess deaths when the UK population was 20% smaller. So equivalent to 36-48,000 today. What is your corresponding take on Harold Wilson?
If I might interject a comment - AFAIK that was sans any precautions or changes to procedures at all, no?
Covid is 100K ++ already - and that is with great changes and significant precautions.
So Wilson did nothing - and had tens of thousands of excess deaths. Where's the outrage?
If Mr J had done nothing we would have had hundreds (plural) of [edit] thousands of excess deaths.
The differencve is partly in the degree of saturation of the medical system, of course.
The point is, unlike Wilson, this Government has taken steps. Those steps have saved lives as a result. Maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. That needs to be put on the other side of the ledger.
It hasn't been here.
Why are UK deaths so much higher than Germany's?
Do we know that all countries are counting deaths in exactly same way? if not we probably need to look at excess deaths
Are those counted the same way/identifiable?
Comparisons wont be perfect no matter what, though the general position of most nations will probably be clear.
The problem with excess deaths for between-country comparisons is baseline variations. Say we're comparing UK and France on excess deaths, but France had a summer heatwave in 2018 (random example, no idea if they did) that resulted in a lot of excess deaths in that year. The France 2015-2019 baseline is thus raised, compared to UK where nothing unusual happened in 2015-2019 (again, for sake of argument - maybe UK had an odd year too). France then looks relatively better than UK on excess deaths.
Excess deaths are great for answering one question: how unusual is this year compared to the recent average (say 5 years). It enables answering questions such as were all those who died with Covid due to die anyway (nowhere near) and also picking up the net effect of other gains/losses in mortality.
Also, if we stick with the standard last five year baseline for excess deaths, then we'll see negative excess deaths (hopefully!) for 2022-2024 at least due to 2020/21 raising the baseline, even if deaths are actually completely normal for the long term trend.
Alastair's article is, sadly, entirely right and fair. We should cut the government a lot of slack for making some mistakes, especially early on when the evidence was not completely clear and the sheer scale of the impending disaster hadn't struck home. But there's no excuse for the later mistakes made in the face of what was by then very clear evidence - notably the refusal by Boris to take firm action in late November and early December, when it was obvious that things were getting out of control, even just looking at the grim statistics posted here daily by the excellent @Malmesbury. And that error was entirely due to serious character flaws of Boris Johnson: his dithering, his very strong tendency to hope that bad news will go away if he ignores it, and his persistent bad judgement. 'Saving Christmas' was not possible, and pretending it was just made everything worse.
Where we will finally be placed in the grim league tables of death when this is all over is, of course, far from clear. We know from experience last year that some countries which seemed initially to be doing very well ended up with a particularly bad second wave, and vice versa. I would not be at all surprised if the combination of the spread of newer variants and the poor performance on vaccinations in some European countries mean that other countries will come out of this with a death toll similar to or worse than ours; in many cases, they too have made avoidable mistakes. Nonetheless, the prime responsibility of the British government is to British citizens, and I'm afraid that it is inescapably true that they have not discharged that responsibility well, with the welcome exception of the vaccine procurement and rollout.
Was the lifting of lockdown in December only bad in retrospect as we didn't understand the new strain. Surely different decisions would be made on models that included for a R rate of 1.7 compared to one
I think we can clearly see the uptick in September when Universities go back, and by November we clearly knew that the R rate was high; the "why" is not as relevant as the fact that it was. To that point, though, we also had strong indicators that this was because of new mutations, though we hadn't characterized by exactly how much they were contributing.
There were many voices calling for this from late September onwards, and they were right. The "hindsight" narrative is a straw man put up by the Government to cover its backside that sadly seems to have got some traction.
Schools in September, universities in October, perhaps? Christmas was odd because the relaxation was heavily trailed but just a couple of days before Christmas, arrangements were made less free, and I suspect a lot of the widely-publicised breaches were because people had not even noticed the late change.
I think it is actually kicked off by people returning from Summer holidays, which caused infections in late August, which become symptomatic in early September; the schools and Universities compounded that.
EU fans starting to ask what they can learn from the UK? That's progress. They should keep up with that. 👍🏻
Earlier in the pandemic it was clear that Germany did test handling better than the UK and we sought to learn lessons that we can. As the pandemic nears the end its clear the UK is handling vaccines better than other nations - they can and should learn from us and we should try and help share our expertise.
The idea one nation is entirely bad - or good - is an utter nonsense. Improvements won't come from complete polarisation, they will come from trying to objectively learn what is good and what could be better.
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
Thrilled to say my Dad - group 5, & 69 years young is getting a first vaccination today. Coventry NHS.
That's great news if they're down to group 5 already - although each successive group contains many more members than the previous groups.
Lots of parents of PBers being done at the moment, those 10m vaccines have had to go somewhere!
Not so re all the group numbers. The 65-69 group is only 2.9m so less than several of the groups above it. I'll give you one guess as to why I know that?
Australian Open boss Craig Tiley says he is "absolutely confident" the Grand Slam will start as planned on Monday,
The way its going they will have to play matches via putting up a net in the corridor of the quarantine hotel and have them play rallies by hit the ball out of their room doors.
The quarantine situation seemed to be bit of a mess, but if everyone playing has now been quarantined then the tournament itself should be fine.
The problems were mostly those of communication - the players didn't realise they'd be stuck in an hotel room for a fortnight eating room service, and thought they'd be able to train and use the hotel's facilities.
F1 decided to pass on the Melbourne event, because they couldn't work with the quarantine requirements, so it's not exactly news how strict the Aussies are.
Hope the organisers of the Euros are paying attention - getting tennis players to the tournament is going to be like herding sheep, whereas footballers will be like herding cats.
EU fans starting to ask what they can learn from the UK? That's progress. They should keep up with that. 👍🏻
Earlier in the pandemic it was clear that Germany did test handling better than the UK and we sought to learn lessons that we can. As the pandemic nears the end its clear the UK is handling vaccines better than other nations - they can and should learn from us and we should try and help share our expertise.
The idea one nation is entirely bad - or good - is an utter nonsense. Improvements won't come from complete polarisation, they will come from trying to objectively learn what is good and what could be better.
I'm sure he'll be back to his ridiculous graphs before long, but at least a stopped clock is right twice a day.
A challenge for the Brains Trust. Anyone know of any photos? I would have though Thatcher, and perhaps Major, Blair etc would have done this at some stage.
Those look like EU summits. I think the twitter thread was about PMs appearing in front of it routinely, like at press conferences.
I do think it is interesting that it is not a simple matter to find pictures of UK prime ministers in front of the EU flag; substantial image management work has probably gone into that.
By contrast, it's very easy to find one of Ms Sturgeon in Scotland with an EU flag and saltire. For the same reason, no doiubt.
Thrilled to say my Dad - group 5, & 69 years young is getting a first vaccination today. Coventry NHS.
That's great news if they're down to group 5 already - although each successive group contains many more members than the previous groups.
Lots of parents of PBers being done at the moment, those 10m vaccines have had to go somewhere!
Not so re all the group numbers. The 65-69 group is only 2.9m so less than several of the groups above it. I'll give you one guess as to why I know that?
This was the chart I was looking at. Shows 65-69 and 70-74 quite close in numbers, but a lot higher than the groups above.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
There are countries that were celebrating the end of COVID-19 in the summer that got absolutely hammered by the second wave. I expect the third wave to be worst yet, and a lot of countries to have learnt little from what we've experience with the new variant, or the need for prompt mass vaccination.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's not going to be eradicated, and we'll likely need vaccinations for years to come. Not sure how countries like Aus and NZ are going to deal with this.
Was the lifting of lockdown in December only bad in retrospect as we didn't understand the new strain. Surely different decisions would be made on models that included for a R rate of 1.7 compared to one
I think we can clearly see the uptick in September when Universities go back, and by November we clearly knew that the R rate was high; the "why" is not as relevant as the fact that it was. To that point, though, we also had strong indicators that this was because of new mutations, though we hadn't characterized by exactly how much they were contributing.
There were many voices calling for this from late September onwards, and they were right. The "hindsight" narrative is a straw man put up by the Government to cover its backside that sadly seems to have got some traction.
I was replying to another post which didn't pull through! I did think the Government was being optimistic in December but this was made much worse by the new mutations. I have not heard the straw man argument from the Government but it seemed to me when considering the end of lockdown in December that assumptions were being modelled using the wrong r rate.
Just calculating the 13500 cases up compared at r 1.7 to r 1 on a weekly transmission rate show so getting to a 5th reinfection by the end of December leads to round 250,000 total cases well over 100,000 daily cases for R1.7 compared to total around 70,000 cases and still 13500 for R1
Apologies in advance, but you've inadvertently triggered me
The thing that bugged me (other than some of the obvious, much of which covered in the video, it was fun enough) was the weirdness around all the black toffs. I'm not bothered that many in the cast were black - not really bothered by the ethnicity of a character, completely fine with Dev Patel as Copperfield, for example, I'm cool with a black, Asian or female Bond. After finding the unexplained preponderance of black toffs in the first episode a bit jarring, I got used to it. The fact that they were black went unremarked and I decided it was simply being ignored. Fine. Afterall, who cares, although the lack of Asian toffs did seem odd. But then in one episode there's a conversation between two major (black) characters in which one warns the other that their newfound elevation (thanks to the Queen, apparently, in Bridgerton-land) is not certain to continue, tackling head on - in an implausible way - the large number of black upper classes.
So, why not: (i) Just have people of all ethnic groups scattered throughout the cast and ignore it (as stated, I don't care and it wasn't the only unrealistic thing). It becomes completely unimportant. or (ii) Remove the setting from Georgian London and shove it in some fictional kingdom, Bridgerton-land where ethnic mixing went unremarked, even hundreds of years ago. You can keep the sub-plot of a queen struggling with her husbands mental health issues and the subjugation of women.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's not going to be eradicated, and we'll likely need vaccinations for years to come. Not sure how countries like Aus and NZ are going to deal with this.
Surely Aus and NZ vaccinate everyone and open up.
Once everyone's vaccinated then even if its still around, it won't be like the last year. With vaccines that are 90% effective, almost 100% effective at avoiding hospitalisations and over 50% effective at reducing onward transmission then this actually will become "like the flu".
Journalists keep referring to the US company "Merck" however when in Europe "Merck" is actually known as "MSD" to distinguish it from the German company "Merck".
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
I think they'll be looking at antibody production.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's not going to be eradicated, and we'll likely need vaccinations for years to come. Not sure how countries like Aus and NZ are going to deal with this.
Surely Aus and NZ vaccinate everyone and open up.
Once everyone's vaccinated then even if its still around, it won't be like the last year. With vaccines that are 90% effective, almost 100% effective at avoiding hospitalisations and over 50% effective at reducing onward transmission then this actually will become "like the flu".
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's not going to be eradicated, and we'll likely need vaccinations for years to come. Not sure how countries like Aus and NZ are going to deal with this.
They'll pivot to proof of vaccinations and negative test on entry whilst it is endemic.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
There is still lots of unknowns...transmission, length that protection will last, effectiveness againat these various mutations.
Politicalbetting is an excellent site and I have enjoyed coming here (and very occasionally posting) over the past 15 years. The insight on the future being the main reason.
But this post is the last straw. I am no fan of Boris but this has nothing to do with political betting and is just pure political vitriol that I can go and read on the Canary if I want to.
Good to luck to OGH and all of you but I vote with my feet.
I feel the same.
I like this site for mostly good debate on threads that, certainly in Mike's case, are invariably betting related.
This has bugger all to do with betting. It's just bile from an embittered man who lost on Brexit.
Sort it out OGH or your regulars will depart this site.
The response to comments like this is, “see yer”.
And you run the risk of losing many varied and good contributors by comments like that
You will lose a lot more if you and Mysticrose succeed in banning any articles that criticise the sainted Boris
Agreed. I spend a lot less time on here than I did (which is probably good for me and the site) due to the tiresome and persistent Boris ramping.
A challenge for the Brains Trust. Anyone know of any photos? I would have though Thatcher, and perhaps Major, Blair etc would have done this at some stage.
Those look like EU summits. I think the twitter thread was about PMs appearing in front of it routinely, like at press conferences.
I do think it is interesting that it is not a simple matter to find pictures of UK prime ministers in front of the EU flag; substantial image management work has probably gone into that.
By contrast, it's very easy to find one of Ms Sturgeon in Scotland with an EU flag and saltire. For the same reason, no doiubt.
Yes. Keeping it to hand to insert up Boris's nose
Have they changed their practice since we left membership? Under English (not sure about Welsh or Scottish) Law you need Planning Permission to display (I think 'publicly', but that may also mean 'outside') a flag of an International Organisation of which we are not a member.
Loophole is to pretend you are displaying the "Council of Europe" flag, which is physically the same. Noticeable that Holyrood call it the "European" flag in their flag policy.
What about a Saltire and Union Flag in a routine press conference of Scottish Gov?
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's not going to be eradicated, and we'll likely need vaccinations for years to come. Not sure how countries like Aus and NZ are going to deal with this.
Surely Aus and NZ vaccinate everyone and open up.
Once everyone's vaccinated then even if its still around, it won't be like the last year. With vaccines that are 90% effective, almost 100% effective at avoiding hospitalisations and over 50% effective at reducing onward transmission then this actually will become "like the flu".
People always assume things won't change. At the start of a pandemic that means refusing to accept it's happening. Right now it means large numbers of people refusing to accept this is going to end much more sharply than commonly thought.
A challenge for the Brains Trust. Anyone know of any photos? I would have though Thatcher, and perhaps Major, Blair etc would have done this at some stage.
Those look like EU summits. I think the twitter thread was about PMs appearing in front of it routinely, like at press conferences.
I do think it is interesting that it is not a simple matter to find pictures of UK prime ministers in front of the EU flag; substantial image management work has probably gone into that.
By contrast, it's very easy to find one of Ms Sturgeon in Scotland with an EU flag and saltire. For the same reason, no doiubt.
Yes. Keeping it to hand to insert up Boris's nose
Have they changed their practise since we left membership? Under English (not sure about Welsh) Law you need Planning Permission to display (outside) a flag of an International Organisation of which we are not a member.
Loophole is to pretend you are displaying the "Council of Europe" flag. Noticeable that Holyrood call it the "European" flag.
What about a Saltire and Union Flag in a routine press conference of Scottish Gov?
I think it has changed, certainly taken down at Holyrood IIRC.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
I thought that, particularly given the size (800). However, just looked at the registration and they're looking at immune response via blood tests, not numbers of infections. So it doesn't matter if Covid levels drop sharply here, possibly even good as it reduces noise from exposure to the virus rather than the vaccine.
On topic, the deaths are a tragedy - let there be no doubt about that, whatsoever - and with swifter decisions by the Government the death toll now might "only" be in the 65-75,000 range rather than at the 108,000 mark. But, it'd never have been zero; this going to be a global catastrophe as soon as the virus got loose.
However, let there be no mistake: that's not what this thread header is really about; it's about the author wanting the Prime Minister gone because of his role in Brexit and as cheerleader for Brexit - nothing more, nothing less. Covid is merely a useful stick to beat him with. If there was any doubt about that the mentioning of Dan Hannan gives it away.
I will mourn with close friends of mine who've experienced personal tragedy, advocate policies that help us rebuild and mitigate the long-term effects on our children and young people, and I will do what I can to influence the policy debate to see that such a calamity never visits us again.
But, I don't have much time for emotional blackmail and cheap politics - and I say that as someone who didn't want Boris for PM in the first place, and still don't think he's up to the job.
By your own estimate is an avoidable death toll of 30,000 to 40,000. Now, what do you think should be done about a government responsible for such an appalling death toll?
Answers not including the word Brexit would be much appreciated.
The Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968-9 led to 30-40,000 excess deaths when the UK population was 20% smaller. So equivalent to 36-48,000 today. What is your corresponding take on Harold Wilson?
If I might interject a comment - AFAIK that was sans any precautions or changes to procedures at all, no?
Covid is 100K ++ already - and that is with great changes and significant precautions.
So Wilson did nothing - and had tens of thousands of excess deaths. Where's the outrage?
If Mr J had done nothing we would have had hundreds (plural) of [edit] thousands of excess deaths.
The differencve is partly in the degree of saturation of the medical system, of course.
The point is, unlike Wilson, this Government has taken steps. Those steps have saved lives as a result. Maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. That needs to be put on the other side of the ledger.
It hasn't been here.
What could Wilson have done? Different world, in interesting ways. Vaccines did exist, but flu is very variable and I don't know enough to assess that. However this makes interesting reading. Vaccines were pretty useless....
Which vaccines though ? ...A survey was made of epidemics in boarding schools in which some of the pupils had been vaccinated, in six with commercial polyvalent vaccine and in five with HK; there was a lower incidence of influenza in two schools vaccinated 2 or 4 weeks earlier with HK vaccine...
The Merck vaccine, which was specific to the new strain, might have been effective ? Knowledge was, of course, massively more limited back then, and it certainly was a different world.
(Note we're still trying to develop a universal - polyvalent - flu vaccine which is effective, fifty years later.)
Officials in Wales will meet later to discuss the South African variant after three cases with no clear link to travel were identified in the country.
Health minister Vaughan Gething says experts are carrying out a "detailed and forensic investigation into each of these cases to discover when and how each person became infected with the South African variant strain and whether there is any evidence of wider community spread".
Opposition parties have called for widescale testing in response to the cases found in Conwy, Anglesey and Neath Port Talbot.
"Surge testing" is taking place door-to-door in some small communities in England where at least 105 cases of the variant have been found.
But Gething says ministers were not "going to look to an approach that has whole community testing across a whole local authority area".
---------
Funny how in England, Labour were moaning that the large scale surge testing in the 8 areas wasn't enough. In Wales, not going to bother at all.
Politicalbetting is an excellent site and I have enjoyed coming here (and very occasionally posting) over the past 15 years. The insight on the future being the main reason.
But this post is the last straw. I am no fan of Boris but this has nothing to do with political betting and is just pure political vitriol that I can go and read on the Canary if I want to.
Good to luck to OGH and all of you but I vote with my feet.
I feel the same.
I like this site for mostly good debate on threads that, certainly in Mike's case, are invariably betting related.
This has bugger all to do with betting. It's just bile from an embittered man who lost on Brexit.
Sort it out OGH or your regulars will depart this site.
The response to comments like this is, “see yer”.
And you run the risk of losing many varied and good contributors by comments like that
You will lose a lot more if you and Mysticrose succeed in banning any articles that criticise the sainted Boris
Agreed. I spend a lot less time on here than I did (which is probably good for me and the site) due to the tiresome and persistent Boris ramping.
Yes. Because this thread is such a Boris ramp.... lol!
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
I thought that, particularly given the size (800). However, just looked at the registration and they're looking at immune response via blood tests, not numbers of infections. So it doesn't matter if Covid levels drop sharply here, possibly even good as it reduces noise from exposure to the virus rather than the vaccine.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
I thought that, particularly given the size (800). However, just looked at the registration and they're looking at immune response via blood tests, not numbers of infections. So it doesn't matter if Covid levels drop sharply here, possibly even good as it reduces noise from exposure to the virus rather than the vaccine.
They'll have to be quick - in about 6 weeks there won't be many unvaccinated 50+ left to trial on
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Recruiting for the early trials - when you had a 50% chance of getting the vaccine months in advance of your expected date - will be much easier than this trial, when you’d be taking a 50% chance of becoming one of the few people actually unvaccinated.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
I think the article by Alistair Meeks is excellent . The Iraq war each death was major news and rightly so. However if the numbers were as high as co vid 19, or as high as the USA in Vietnam it would have been a different media reaction. There seems an indifference to over 100000 deaths, like many are numb to so many .Unless it is one of their own family. I guess the government will have an inquiry about how the pandemic was handled many years down the line, which will hopefully prepare us better for the next one.
A challenge for the Brains Trust. Anyone know of any photos? I would have though Thatcher, and perhaps Major, Blair etc would have done this at some stage.
Those look like EU summits. I think the twitter thread was about PMs appearing in front of it routinely, like at press conferences.
I do think it is interesting that it is not a simple matter to find pictures of UK prime ministers in front of the EU flag; substantial image management work has probably gone into that.
By contrast, it's very easy to find one of Ms Sturgeon in Scotland with an EU flag and saltire. For the same reason, no doiubt.
Yes. Keeping it to hand to insert up Boris's nose
Have they changed their practice since we left membership? Under English (not sure about Welsh or Scottish) Law you need Planning Permission to display (I think 'publicly', but that may also mean 'outside') a flag of an International Organisation of which we are not a member.
Loophole is to pretend you are displaying the "Council of Europe" flag, which is physically the same. Noticeable that Holyrood call it the "European" flag in their flag policy.
What about a Saltire and Union Flag in a routine press conference of Scottish Gov?
Holyrood voted to keep flying the EU flag outside. I'm confident that getting up BJ's nose was the last thing on their mind
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
There are countries that were celebrating the end of COVID-19 in the summer that got absolutely hammered by the second wave. I expect the third wave to be worst yet, and a lot of countries to have learnt little from what we've experience with the new variant, or the need for prompt mass vaccination.
The third wave is what worries me most, especially if it has a high degree of vaccine dilution as we may have completely got rid of all the restrictions and social distancing by the end of the summer.
That's why there is a huge need of having a full inquiry to establish what we did wrong in the first and second waves and what we can do to be prepared for a repeat.
Areas of weakness for the UK that need to be planned for:
1. Border controls including halting roll-on and roll-off transit temporarily. What kind of issues will that result in, do we need to have a new strategic reserve of basic foodstuffs to enable this. 2. Having surge capacity of hotel rooms for a quarantine system that can be implemented over night. 3. A new insurance scheme for paying for the above capacity, something like ATOL that is added onto all flight tickets. 4. The isolate part of track, trace, isolate needs to be improved significantly, what can be done on this. What incentives should we have for isolation etc... 5. How can the vaccine procurement scheme be further streamlined. Are we able to effectively queue jump again for newly formulated mutation busting vaccines.
There's loads more and we need to figure out answers to these questions very, very fast because we haven't got a lot of time until the third wave of vaccine resistant variants hits these shores and we're back into the same bullshit pattern of lockdown and wait for vaccines.
I think the article by Alistair Meeks is excellent . The Iraq war each death was major news and rightly so. However if the numbers were as high as co vid 19, or as high as the USA in Vietnam it would have been a different media reaction. There seems an indifference to over 100000 deaths, like many are numb to so many .Unless it is one of their own family. I guess the government will have an inquiry about how the pandemic was handled many years down the line, which will hopefully prepare us better for the next one.
'The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 100,000 is a statistic'
Was the lifting of lockdown in December only bad in retrospect as we didn't understand the new strain. Surely different decisions would be made on models that included for a R rate of 1.7 compared to one
I think we can clearly see the uptick in September when Universities go back, and by November we clearly knew that the R rate was high; the "why" is not as relevant as the fact that it was. To that point, though, we also had strong indicators that this was because of new mutations, though we hadn't characterized by exactly how much they were contributing.
There were many voices calling for this from late September onwards, and they were right. The "hindsight" narrative is a straw man put up by the Government to cover its backside that sadly seems to have got some traction.
Schools in September, universities in October, perhaps? Christmas was odd because the relaxation was heavily trailed but just a couple of days before Christmas, arrangements were made less free, and I suspect a lot of the widely-publicised breaches were because people had not even noticed the late change.
I think it is actually kicked off by people returning from Summer holidays, which caused infections in late August, which become symptomatic in early September; the schools and Universities compounded that.
Yes, this began in August. Deaths grew exponentially every single week in September, October and start of November so it already had to be circulating in increasing numbers before then.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Recruiting for the early trials - when you had a 50% chance of getting the vaccine months in advance of your expected date - will be much easier than this trial, when you’d be taking a 50% chance of becoming one of the few people actually unvaccinated.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
Aiui this is a single blind study so it doesn't have a control group, the efficacy will be compared to known trial results for Pfizer and AZ. It is an effective queue jump for anyone aged 50-70.
Catastrophic decision making is a feature of this government
That's all great as far as it goes but
(1) anyone who thought that you could become a third country with regard to the EU without NTBs isn't really up with reality and (2) a lot of the critics are emulating the DUP by opposing everything and proposing nothing serious and precise about what is better. Which decisions. What improvements. How implemented.
BTW yes, we have been told untruths by government.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether steps which the government did or did not take led to an increased number of deaths, especially now when the government is considering when and how to lift lockdown.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask what the PM meant when he said he took "full responsibility". What does this actually mean?
Mr Meeks also fully praises the government for its vaccination success. As I do. This does not give them a free pass from criticism in relation to other things that they got and are still getting wrong. Only this morning the CEO of Best Western Hotels was asking pertinent questions about the government hotel quarantine policy.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out that each of the 108,000 people was more than a statistic - a life, a person loved and missed by others. The human cost is very real. It is worth remembering that in all the talk about numbers, graphs and statistics. We have lost a nephew; one of my best friends lost his father; many of us have been touched by illness. This was not simply the result of an Act of God.
Mr Meeks makes the simple point that government actions and inactions contributed to these losses and that we should seek to learn the lessons from that and apportion responsibility for both things done well and badly. That this simple point should inspire such virulent hostility is odd.
On a related point, I am a bit tired of people contributing headers being constantly criticised by those who never do. Not criticism of the "I don't agree and this is why" variety but the carping "oh he hates Brexit therefore is not entitled to say anything" variety we've seen today or the "I'm a famous author, no-one can write as well as me, I read such a lot but cannot be bothered to read anything more than 3 paragraphs long" variety. It is not easy writing headers. Some have been doing so regularly. I for one am immensely grateful to OGH for the opportunity. I am also in awe of his ability to produce 3 interesting threads a day day in and day out which stimulates so much interesting and intelligent discussion. I dare say that he would not publish others' headers if he did not think them worthwhile. Those who think they can do better or would like more variety should offer up their own contributions.
Excellent post, it is also intriguing that those most offended by the header and that anyone might dare to express such a view are pretty much the same people who complain the most about voices being cancelled. Perhaps they only oppose voices they sympathise with being cancelled and care little for open debate.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Recruiting for the early trials - when you had a 50% chance of getting the vaccine months in advance of your expected date - will be much easier than this trial, when you’d be taking a 50% chance of becoming one of the few people actually unvaccinated.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
Aiui this is a single blind study so it doesn't have a control group, the efficacy will be compared to known trial results for Pfizer and AZ. It is an effective queue jump for anyone aged 50-70.
Thanks for the explanation (and to everyone else) - it makes sense to be doing trials testing antibodies rather than infections like in Phase III.
If the results of this trial is good then would that mean mix and match can be approved based on these trials alone, or would there then need to be a Phase III? Or is Phase III no longer needed since its already been tested previously?
I think the article by Alistair Meeks is excellent . The Iraq war each death was major news and rightly so. However if the numbers were as high as co vid 19, or as high as the USA in Vietnam it would have been a different media reaction. There seems an indifference to over 100000 deaths, like many are numb to so many .Unless it is one of their own family. I guess the government will have an inquiry about how the pandemic was handled many years down the line, which will hopefully prepare us better for the next one.
'The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 100,000 is a statistic'
Pro-tip: never let anyone without a good grasp of statistics (and common sense) loose with SPSS. In fact, perhaps never let anyone loose with SPSS. It lets you do the most ridiculous things.
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
There are countries that were celebrating the end of COVID-19 in the summer that got absolutely hammered by the second wave. I expect the third wave to be worst yet, and a lot of countries to have learnt little from what we've experience with the new variant, or the need for prompt mass vaccination.
The third wave is what worries me most, especially if it has a high degree of vaccine dilution as we may have completely got rid of all the restrictions and social distancing by the end of the summer.
That's why there is a huge need of having a full inquiry to establish what we did wrong in the first and second waves and what we can do to be prepared for a repeat.
Areas of weakness for the UK that need to be planned for:
1. Border controls including halting roll-on and roll-off transit temporarily. What kind of issues will that result in, do we need to have a new strategic reserve of basic foodstuffs to enable this. 2. Having surge capacity of hotel rooms for a quarantine system that can be implemented over night. 3. A new insurance scheme for paying for the above capacity, something like ATOL that is added onto all flight tickets. 4. The isolate part of track, trace, isolate needs to be improved significantly, what can be done on this. What incentives should we have for isolation etc... 5. How can the vaccine procurement scheme be further streamlined. Are we able to effectively queue jump again for newly formulated mutation busting vaccines.
There's loads more and we need to figure out answers to these questions very, very fast because we haven't got a lot of time until the third wave of vaccine resistant variants hits these shores and we're back into the same bullshit pattern of lockdown and wait for vaccines.
On your point 1 - Not sure if that could work.
A more practical policy, if you are determined to keep lorry drivers out of the country would be to change the cabs either before embarking or just after landing.
Practical as in the sense of an incredibly expensive, vast logistical operation that will stuff up trade - but probably cheaper and more possible than stopping all ro-ro freight.
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
There are countries that were celebrating the end of COVID-19 in the summer that got absolutely hammered by the second wave. I expect the third wave to be worst yet, and a lot of countries to have learnt little from what we've experience with the new variant, or the need for prompt mass vaccination.
The third wave is what worries me most, especially if it has a high degree of vaccine dilution as we may have completely got rid of all the restrictions and social distancing by the end of the summer.
That's why there is a huge need of having a full inquiry to establish what we did wrong in the first and second waves and what we can do to be prepared for a repeat.
Areas of weakness for the UK that need to be planned for:
1. Border controls including halting roll-on and roll-off transit temporarily. What kind of issues will that result in, do we need to have a new strategic reserve of basic foodstuffs to enable this. 2. Having surge capacity of hotel rooms for a quarantine system that can be implemented over night. 3. A new insurance scheme for paying for the above capacity, something like ATOL that is added onto all flight tickets. 4. The isolate part of track, trace, isolate needs to be improved significantly, what can be done on this. What incentives should we have for isolation etc... 5. How can the vaccine procurement scheme be further streamlined. Are we able to effectively queue jump again for newly formulated mutation busting vaccines.
There's loads more and we need to figure out answers to these questions very, very fast because we haven't got a lot of time until the third wave of vaccine resistant variants hits these shores and we're back into the same bullshit pattern of lockdown and wait for vaccines.
This is exactly what we should be learning now - and we should be discussing it in public so people understand.
One of the problems with this whole thing has been a failure to follow basic decision making comms procedure:
This would enable the public to understand *why* we are doing what we are doing, *what* we chose not to do (and why), and *whether* what we are doing is being effective. It would also allow us all to participate in ongoing lessons learned.
This is basic stuff. But instead, we are taking a "political communications" approach
1. Manage the politics not the problem 2. Bury bad news if possible 3. Use the news cycle to move on ASAP
Catastrophic decision making is a feature of this government
That's all great as far as it goes but
(1) anyone who thought that you could become a third country with regard to the EU without NTBs isn't really up with reality and (2) a lot of the critics are emulating the DUP by opposing everything and proposing nothing serious and precise about what is better. Which decisions. What improvements. How implemented.
BTW yes, we have been told untruths by government.
At what point do we say that anti-vaccine propaganda is a threat to public health? (leaving aside the particularly unpleasant nature of this literature).
Thrilled to say my Dad - group 5, & 69 years young is getting a first vaccination today. Coventry NHS.
That's great news if they're down to group 5 already - although each successive group contains many more members than the previous groups.
Lots of parents of PBers being done at the moment, those 10m vaccines have had to go somewhere!
Not so re all the group numbers. The 65-69 group is only 2.9m so less than several of the groups above it. I'll give you one guess as to why I know that?
This was the chart I was looking at. Shows 65-69 and 70-74 quite close in numbers, but a lot higher than the groups above.
They weren't just grouped together by equal spaces of age and also the groups contained people unrelated to age eg extremely vunlerable, health workers, care home residents, etc.
So the top group was split in 5 and had in the millions 4.1, 3.8, 2.3, 3.2, 1.2.
My group 65 - 69 has 2.9m
The next group 16 - 64 with health issues is 7.3m and much larger than all those above.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Recruiting for the early trials - when you had a 50% chance of getting the vaccine months in advance of your expected date - will be much easier than this trial, when you’d be taking a 50% chance of becoming one of the few people actually unvaccinated.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
Aiui this is a single blind study so it doesn't have a control group, the efficacy will be compared to known trial results for Pfizer and AZ. It is an effective queue jump for anyone aged 50-70.
Thanks for the explanation (and to everyone else) - it makes sense to be doing trials testing antibodies rather than infections like in Phase III.
If the results of this trial is good then would that mean mix and match can be approved based on these trials alone, or would there then need to be a Phase III? Or is Phase III no longer needed since its already been tested previously?
No, it's not going to be based on antibodies. What they will do is compare the infection rate in the cohort over time vs two same dose vaccinated cohorts. I'm sure they're going to do antibody tests as well though. The number of neutralising antibodies can actually be modelled fairly well into efficacy now with so many trial results in and so many variable immune responses among those trials.
Politicalbetting is an excellent site and I have enjoyed coming here (and very occasionally posting) over the past 15 years. The insight on the future being the main reason.
But this post is the last straw. I am no fan of Boris but this has nothing to do with political betting and is just pure political vitriol that I can go and read on the Canary if I want to.
Good to luck to OGH and all of you but I vote with my feet.
I feel the same.
I like this site for mostly good debate on threads that, certainly in Mike's case, are invariably betting related.
This has bugger all to do with betting. It's just bile from an embittered man who lost on Brexit.
Sort it out OGH or your regulars will depart this site.
The response to comments like this is, “see yer”.
And you run the risk of losing many varied and good contributors by comments like that
You will lose a lot more if you and Mysticrose succeed in banning any articles that criticise the sainted Boris
Agreed. I spend a lot less time on here than I did (which is probably good for me and the site) due to the tiresome and persistent Boris ramping.
Lol - his party's at 43-frickin'-percent in the polls! If anyone's persistently 'ramping' him, it's the British public - take it up with them!
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
There are countries that were celebrating the end of COVID-19 in the summer that got absolutely hammered by the second wave. I expect the third wave to be worst yet, and a lot of countries to have learnt little from what we've experience with the new variant, or the need for prompt mass vaccination.
The third wave is what worries me most, especially if it has a high degree of vaccine dilution as we may have completely got rid of all the restrictions and social distancing by the end of the summer.
That's why there is a huge need of having a full inquiry to establish what we did wrong in the first and second waves and what we can do to be prepared for a repeat.
Areas of weakness for the UK that need to be planned for:
1. Border controls including halting roll-on and roll-off transit temporarily. What kind of issues will that result in, do we need to have a new strategic reserve of basic foodstuffs to enable this. 2. Having surge capacity of hotel rooms for a quarantine system that can be implemented over night. 3. A new insurance scheme for paying for the above capacity, something like ATOL that is added onto all flight tickets. 4. The isolate part of track, trace, isolate needs to be improved significantly, what can be done on this. What incentives should we have for isolation etc... 5. How can the vaccine procurement scheme be further streamlined. Are we able to effectively queue jump again for newly formulated mutation busting vaccines.
There's loads more and we need to figure out answers to these questions very, very fast because we haven't got a lot of time until the third wave of vaccine resistant variants hits these shores and we're back into the same bullshit pattern of lockdown and wait for vaccines.
On your point 1 - Not sure if that could work.
A more practical policy, if you are determined to keep lorry drivers out of the country would be to change the cabs either before embarking or just after landing.
Practical as in the sense of an incredibly expensive, vast logistical operation that will stuff up trade - but probably cheaper and more possible than stopping all ro-ro freight.
That one needs the system which is already used by a lot of businesses, where the trailer goes on the ferry unaccompanied.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's quicker, and easier to set up, and results in terms of safety and immune response will be quicker too. And if it proves safe and effective will make considerably easier the task of giving both shots to our own population, as well as others.
Catastrophic decision making is a feature of this government
That's all great as far as it goes but
(1) anyone who thought that you could become a third country with regard to the EU without NTBs isn't really up with reality and (2) a lot of the critics are emulating the DUP by opposing everything and proposing nothing serious and precise about what is better. Which decisions. What improvements. How implemented.
BTW yes, we have been told untruths by government.
EEA says Hi!
EEA still has Customs Union paperwork that people are whinging about.
If you don't want any NTBs then you should have voted to Remain. If you did vote Remain, then accept you lost and there will be some NTBs.
Not sure the full impact of the number of deaths and long term disabilities will be felt for years if not longer. The number is simply too great to comprehend in the midst of it.
Was the lifting of lockdown in December only bad in retrospect as we didn't understand the new strain. Surely different decisions would be made on models that included for a R rate of 1.7 compared to one
I think we can clearly see the uptick in September when Universities go back, and by November we clearly knew that the R rate was high; the "why" is not as relevant as the fact that it was. To that point, though, we also had strong indicators that this was because of new mutations, though we hadn't characterized by exactly how much they were contributing.
There were many voices calling for this from late September onwards, and they were right. The "hindsight" narrative is a straw man put up by the Government to cover its backside that sadly seems to have got some traction.
Schools in September, universities in October, perhaps? Christmas was odd because the relaxation was heavily trailed but just a couple of days before Christmas, arrangements were made less free, and I suspect a lot of the widely-publicised breaches were because people had not even noticed the late change.
I think it is actually kicked off by people returning from Summer holidays, which caused infections in late August, which become symptomatic in early September; the schools and Universities compounded that.
Yes, this began in August. Deaths grew exponentially every single week in September, October and start of November so it already had to be circulating in increasing numbers before then.
And indeed checking the numbers cases had indeed been rising steadily over the end of August.
The lack of action at the End of September/beginning of October is a key point for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I think the article by Alistair Meeks is excellent . The Iraq war each death was major news and rightly so. However if the numbers were as high as co vid 19, or as high as the USA in Vietnam it would have been a different media reaction. There seems an indifference to over 100000 deaths, like many are numb to so many .Unless it is one of their own family. I guess the government will have an inquiry about how the pandemic was handled many years down the line, which will hopefully prepare us better for the next one.
'The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 100,000 is a statistic'
Yes agreed Phillip. I have agreed with you a lot lately.
A challenge for the Brains Trust. Anyone know of any photos? I would have though Thatcher, and perhaps Major, Blair etc would have done this at some stage.
Those look like EU summits. I think the twitter thread was about PMs appearing in front of it routinely, like at press conferences.
I do think it is interesting that it is not a simple matter to find pictures of UK prime ministers in front of the EU flag; substantial image management work has probably gone into that.
By contrast, it's very easy to find one of Ms Sturgeon in Scotland with an EU flag and saltire. For the same reason, no doiubt.
Yes. Keeping it to hand to insert up Boris's nose
Have they changed their practice since we left membership? Under English (not sure about Welsh or Scottish) Law you need Planning Permission to display (I think 'publicly', but that may also mean 'outside') a flag of an International Organisation of which we are not a member.
Loophole is to pretend you are displaying the "Council of Europe" flag, which is physically the same. Noticeable that Holyrood call it the "European" flag in their flag policy.
What about a Saltire and Union Flag in a routine press conference of Scottish Gov?
Holyrood voted to keep flying the EU flag outside. I'm confident that getting up BJ's nose was the last thing on their mind
ZOE app new infections down 5% again today, in line with recent pattern since last Friday. Officially reported cases currently falling a bit slower in line with last week's ZOE slowdown, so good grounds to hope the fall in officially reported cases is about to accelerate.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's quicker, and easier to set up, and results in terms of safety and immune response will be quicker too. And if it proves safe and effective will make considerably easier the task of giving both shots to our own population, as well as others.
Yes, I think it's a trial that needs to be done as well because in developing nations record keeping is going to be basically impossible. Once again, scientifically, the UK is absolutely at the cutting edge. It's something we should all be very proud of.
I think the article by Alistair Meeks is excellent . The Iraq war each death was major news and rightly so. However if the numbers were as high as co vid 19, or as high as the USA in Vietnam it would have been a different media reaction. There seems an indifference to over 100000 deaths, like many are numb to so many .Unless it is one of their own family. I guess the government will have an inquiry about how the pandemic was handled many years down the line, which will hopefully prepare us better for the next one.
'The death of one person is a tragedy, the death of 100,000 is a statistic'
Phil Man of Steel Thomson.
But how many vaccines has the EU? You cannot make a Brexit with silk gloves. Gratitude is an illness suffered by dogs and remoaners. etc
Alastair's article is, sadly, entirely right and fair. We should cut the government a lot of slack for making some mistakes, especially early on when the evidence was not completely clear and the sheer scale of the impending disaster hadn't struck home. But there's no excuse for the later mistakes made in the face of what was by then very clear evidence - notably the refusal by Boris to take firm action in late November and early December, when it was obvious that things were getting out of control, even just looking at the grim statistics posted here daily by the excellent @Malmesbury. And that error was entirely due to serious character flaws of Boris Johnson: his dithering, his very strong tendency to hope that bad news will go away if he ignores it, and his persistent bad judgement. 'Saving Christmas' was not possible, and pretending it was just made everything worse.
Where we will finally be placed in the grim league tables of death when this is all over is, of course, far from clear. We know from experience last year that some countries which seemed initially to be doing very well ended up with a particularly bad second wave, and vice versa. I would not be at all surprised if the combination of the spread of newer variants and the poor performance on vaccinations in some European countries mean that other countries will come out of this with a death toll similar to or worse than ours; in many cases, they too have made avoidable mistakes. Nonetheless, the prime responsibility of the British government is to British citizens, and I'm afraid that it is inescapably true that they have not discharged that responsibility well, with the welcome exception of the vaccine procurement and rollout.
We are now in a position that China was in just under a year ago but with the benefit of vaccines. I remember in April or May a firmwide email went out detailing the lockdown measures that were going accross our global offices which cheerily told us that our Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bejing offices were nearly back to normal. I remember niavely thinking "well, three months or so, this isn't going to be so bad!". And a year later, here we are. So lets not waste another year.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Recruiting for the early trials - when you had a 50% chance of getting the vaccine months in advance of your expected date - will be much easier than this trial, when you’d be taking a 50% chance of becoming one of the few people actually unvaccinated.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
Aiui this is a single blind study so it doesn't have a control group, the efficacy will be compared to known trial results for Pfizer and AZ. It is an effective queue jump for anyone aged 50-70.
Thanks for the explanation (and to everyone else) - it makes sense to be doing trials testing antibodies rather than infections like in Phase III.
If the results of this trial is good then would that mean mix and match can be approved based on these trials alone, or would there then need to be a Phase III? Or is Phase III no longer needed since its already been tested previously?
No, it's not going to be based on antibodies. What they will do is compare the infection rate in the cohort over time vs two same dose vaccinated cohorts. I'm sure they're going to do antibody tests as well though. The number of neutralising antibodies can actually be modelled fairly well into efficacy now with so many trial results in and so many variable immune responses among those trials.
Oh.
That goes back to my original question then, given the way case numbers are cratering and that should only continue post-vaccination hopefully, then do you think we will get sufficient infections within the cohorts to get meaningful data?
The irony is surely that hopefully we're in a position where there aren't many infections at all so 800 people might not be sufficient to get meaningful data from? That would be a good problem for us to have, but affect the trial wouldn't it?
Or do you think there's going to continue to be a high enough baseline number of cases for this to work?
Apologies in advance, but you've inadvertently triggered me
The thing that bugged me (other than some of the obvious, much of which covered in the video, it was fun enough) was the weirdness around all the black toffs. I'm not bothered that many in the cast were black - not really bothered by the ethnicity of a character, completely fine with Dev Patel as Copperfield, for example, I'm cool with a black, Asian or female Bond. After finding the unexplained preponderance of black toffs in the first episode a bit jarring, I got used to it. The fact that they were black went unremarked and I decided it was simply being ignored. Fine. Afterall, who cares, although the lack of Asian toffs did seem odd. But then in one episode there's a conversation between two major (black) characters in which one warns the other that their newfound elevation (thanks to the Queen, apparently, in Bridgerton-land) is not certain to continue, tackling head on - in an implausible way - the large number of black upper classes.
So, why not: (i) Just have people of all ethnic groups scattered throughout the cast and ignore it (as stated, I don't care and it wasn't the only unrealistic thing). It becomes completely unimportant. or (ii) Remove the setting from Georgian London and shove it in some fictional kingdom, Bridgerton-land where ethnic mixing went unremarked, even hundreds of years ago. You can keep the sub-plot of a queen struggling with her husbands mental health issues and the subjugation of women.
PS: Does this make me un-woke? Asleep?
Or just overthinking a fairly messily written bit of fun ? Almost certainly more will be revealed (double entendre intended) in the next series.
There are source books, apparently. Can't say I'm greatly tempted to read them.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether steps which the government did or did not take led to an increased number of deaths, especially now when the government is considering when and how to lift lockdown.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask what the PM meant when he said he took "full responsibility". What does this actually mean?
Mr Meeks also fully praises the government for its vaccination success. As I do. This does not give them a free pass from criticism in relation to other things that they got and are still getting wrong. Only this morning the CEO of Best Western Hotels was asking pertinent questions about the government hotel quarantine policy.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out that each of the 108,000 people was more than a statistic - a life, a person loved and missed by others. The human cost is very real. It is worth remembering that in all the talk about numbers, graphs and statistics. We have lost a nephew; one of my best friends lost his father; many of us have been touched by illness. This was not simply the result of an Act of God.
Mr Meeks makes the simple point that government actions and inactions contributed to these losses and that we should seek to learn the lessons from that and apportion responsibility for both things done well and badly. That this simple point should inspire such virulent hostility is odd.
On a related point, I am a bit tired of people contributing headers being constantly criticised by those who never do. Not criticism of the "I don't agree and this is why" variety but the carping "oh he hates Brexit therefore is not entitled to say anything" variety we've seen today or the "I'm a famous author, no-one can write as well as me, I read such a lot but cannot be bothered to read anything more than 3 paragraphs long" variety. It is not easy writing headers. Some have been doing so regularly. I for one am immensely grateful to OGH for the opportunity. I am also in awe of his ability to produce 3 interesting threads a day day in and day out which stimulates so much interesting and intelligent discussion. I dare say that he would not publish others' headers if he did not think them worthwhile. Those who think they can do better or would like more variety should offer up their own contributions.
Excellent post, it is also intriguing that those most offended by the header and that anyone might dare to express such a view are pretty much the same people who complain the most about voices being cancelled. Perhaps they only oppose voices they sympathise with being cancelled and care little for open debate.
The problem with the header is that it is keen to blame the deaths on Boris (or Mark or Nicola). Well, really just selectively on Boris.
I'd say we need to know what advice the politicians were receiving from modellers/scientists/experts before we can even to begin to assess any blame. I'd say we need to do a proper statistical analysis of comparable countries before we can really assess relative performance.
It is curious how it is the lawyers on the board who are anxious to convict after hearing the case for the prosecution. Meeks has already identified and convicted the "culprits" (his word).
I am not a legal expert, I am scientist (which is why I am outraged by Meeks's rubbish).
My recollection of the law though is that we hear the case for the prosecution & the defence before reaching a verdict.
What's unknowable is whether our "South African" variant infections actually came from South Africa, or arose here spontaneously (for example, the first "Kent" variant was found in Scotland but squished by the first lockdown), but given its a public health emergency, the 'precautionary principle" would appear a better strategy than "hope for the best"
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
Recruiting for the early trials - when you had a 50% chance of getting the vaccine months in advance of your expected date - will be much easier than this trial, when you’d be taking a 50% chance of becoming one of the few people actually unvaccinated.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
Aiui this is a single blind study so it doesn't have a control group, the efficacy will be compared to known trial results for Pfizer and AZ. It is an effective queue jump for anyone aged 50-70.
Thanks for the explanation (and to everyone else) - it makes sense to be doing trials testing antibodies rather than infections like in Phase III.
If the results of this trial is good then would that mean mix and match can be approved based on these trials alone, or would there then need to be a Phase III? Or is Phase III no longer needed since its already been tested previously?
No, it's not going to be based on antibodies. What they will do is compare the infection rate in the cohort over time vs two same dose vaccinated cohorts. I'm sure they're going to do antibody tests as well though. The number of neutralising antibodies can actually be modelled fairly well into efficacy now with so many trial results in and so many variable immune responses among those trials.
Oh.
That goes back to my original question then, given the way case numbers are cratering and that should only continue post-vaccination hopefully, then do you think we will get sufficient infections within the cohorts to get meaningful data?
The irony is surely that hopefully we're in a position where there aren't many infections at all so 800 people might not be sufficient to get meaningful data from? That would be a good problem for us to have, but affect the trial wouldn't it?
Or do you think there's going to continue to be a high enough baseline number of cases for this to work?
From the link in the original tweet - http://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN69254139 "The study team will not be offering diagnostic COVID-19 testing as part of this trial" (plain English summary)
"Characterisation of COVID-19 infections experienced following administration of vaccine" is present, but onl among secondary outcomes (no. 6 in the list)
Primary outcome measure: "Immunogenicity of COVID-19 vaccines boosted at day 28 in seronegative participants measured using serum level of anti-spike immunoglobulins using ELISA at 56 days "
There are a number of other secondary measures looking at primary outcome at different time points and also at antibodies.
I don't understand the point of doing any more trials in the UK?
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
It's not going to be eradicated, and we'll likely need vaccinations for years to come. Not sure how countries like Aus and NZ are going to deal with this.
They'll pivot to proof of vaccinations and negative test on entry whilst it is endemic.
Apologies in advance, but you've inadvertently triggered me
The thing that bugged me (other than some of the obvious, much of which covered in the video, it was fun enough) was the weirdness around all the black toffs. I'm not bothered that many in the cast were black - not really bothered by the ethnicity of a character, completely fine with Dev Patel as Copperfield, for example, I'm cool with a black, Asian or female Bond. After finding the unexplained preponderance of black toffs in the first episode a bit jarring, I got used to it. The fact that they were black went unremarked and I decided it was simply being ignored. Fine. Afterall, who cares, although the lack of Asian toffs did seem odd. But then in one episode there's a conversation between two major (black) characters in which one warns the other that their newfound elevation (thanks to the Queen, apparently, in Bridgerton-land) is not certain to continue, tackling head on - in an implausible way - the large number of black upper classes.
So, why not: (i) Just have people of all ethnic groups scattered throughout the cast and ignore it (as stated, I don't care and it wasn't the only unrealistic thing). It becomes completely unimportant. or (ii) Remove the setting from Georgian London and shove it in some fictional kingdom, Bridgerton-land where ethnic mixing went unremarked, even hundreds of years ago. You can keep the sub-plot of a queen struggling with her husbands mental health issues and the subjugation of women.
PS: Does this make me un-woke? Asleep?
Or just overthinking a fairly messily written bit of fun ? Almost certainly more will be revealed (double entendre intended) in the next series.
There are source books, apparently. Can't say I'm greatly tempted to read them.
I'm the kind of person who chokes on his drink when a bit of science gets too badly mangled in a film as well. Ruins my life - and my wife's - to be frank
It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether steps which the government did or did not take led to an increased number of deaths, especially now when the government is considering when and how to lift lockdown.
It is perfectly reasonable to ask what the PM meant when he said he took "full responsibility". What does this actually mean?
Mr Meeks also fully praises the government for its vaccination success. As I do. This does not give them a free pass from criticism in relation to other things that they got and are still getting wrong. Only this morning the CEO of Best Western Hotels was asking pertinent questions about the government hotel quarantine policy.
It is perfectly reasonable to point out that each of the 108,000 people was more than a statistic - a life, a person loved and missed by others. The human cost is very real. It is worth remembering that in all the talk about numbers, graphs and statistics. We have lost a nephew; one of my best friends lost his father; many of us have been touched by illness. This was not simply the result of an Act of God.
Mr Meeks makes the simple point that government actions and inactions contributed to these losses and that we should seek to learn the lessons from that and apportion responsibility for both things done well and badly. That this simple point should inspire such virulent hostility is odd.
On a related point, I am a bit tired of people contributing headers being constantly criticised by those who never do. Not criticism of the "I don't agree and this is why" variety but the carping "oh he hates Brexit therefore is not entitled to say anything" variety we've seen today or the "I'm a famous author, no-one can write as well as me, I read such a lot but cannot be bothered to read anything more than 3 paragraphs long" variety. It is not easy writing headers. Some have been doing so regularly. I for one am immensely grateful to OGH for the opportunity. I am also in awe of his ability to produce 3 interesting threads a day day in and day out which stimulates so much interesting and intelligent discussion. I dare say that he would not publish others' headers if he did not think them worthwhile. Those who think they can do better or would like more variety should offer up their own contributions.
Excellent post, it is also intriguing that those most offended by the header and that anyone might dare to express such a view are pretty much the same people who complain the most about voices being cancelled. Perhaps they only oppose voices they sympathise with being cancelled and care little for open debate.
The problem with the header is that it is keen to blame the deaths on Boris (or Mark or Nicola). Well, really just selectively on Boris.
I'd say we need to know what advice the politicians were receiving from modellers/scientists/experts before we can even to begin to assess any blame. I'd say we need to do a proper statistical analysis of comparable countries before we can really assess relative performance.
It is curious how it is the lawyers on the board who are anxious to convict after hearing the case for the prosecution. Meeks has already identified and convicted the "culprits" (his word).
I am not a legal expert, I am scientist (which is why I am outraged by Meeks's rubbish).
My recollection of the law though is that we hear the case for the prosecution & the defence before reaching a verdict.
To be clear there is nothing wrong with arguing against this or any other header. Absolutely not, I dont agree with the tone of it myself, although it does make some good points and gets us to reflect.
The issue is the hysterical response, threats to leave the site and criticising the author rather than the merits or not of the argument.
Apologies in advance, but you've inadvertently triggered me
The thing that bugged me (other than some of the obvious, much of which covered in the video, it was fun enough) was the weirdness around all the black toffs. I'm not bothered that many in the cast were black - not really bothered by the ethnicity of a character, completely fine with Dev Patel as Copperfield, for example, I'm cool with a black, Asian or female Bond. After finding the unexplained preponderance of black toffs in the first episode a bit jarring, I got used to it. The fact that they were black went unremarked and I decided it was simply being ignored. Fine. Afterall, who cares, although the lack of Asian toffs did seem odd. But then in one episode there's a conversation between two major (black) characters in which one warns the other that their newfound elevation (thanks to the Queen, apparently, in Bridgerton-land) is not certain to continue, tackling head on - in an implausible way - the large number of black upper classes.
So, why not: (i) Just have people of all ethnic groups scattered throughout the cast and ignore it (as stated, I don't care and it wasn't the only unrealistic thing). It becomes completely unimportant. or (ii) Remove the setting from Georgian London and shove it in some fictional kingdom, Bridgerton-land where ethnic mixing went unremarked, even hundreds of years ago. You can keep the sub-plot of a queen struggling with her husbands mental health issues and the subjugation of women.
PS: Does this make me un-woke? Asleep?
Or just overthinking a fairly messily written bit of fun ? Almost certainly more will be revealed (double entendre intended) in the next series.
There are source books, apparently. Can't say I'm greatly tempted to read them.
I'm the kind of person who chokes on his drink when a bit of science gets too badly mangled in a film as well. Ruins my life - and my wife's - to be frank
I take it you have had to avoid rolling news coverage over the past year....
Thrilled to say my Dad - group 5, & 69 years young is getting a first vaccination today. Coventry NHS.
That's great news if they're down to group 5 already - although each successive group contains many more members than the previous groups.
Lots of parents of PBers being done at the moment, those 10m vaccines have had to go somewhere!
Not so re all the group numbers. The 65-69 group is only 2.9m so less than several of the groups above it. I'll give you one guess as to why I know that?
This was the chart I was looking at. Shows 65-69 and 70-74 quite close in numbers, but a lot higher than the groups above.
They weren't just grouped together by equal spaces of age and also the groups contained people unrelated to age eg extremely vunlerable, health workers, care home residents, etc.
So the top group was split in 5 and had in the millions 4.1, 3.8, 2.3, 3.2, 1.2.
My group 65 - 69 has 2.9m
The next group 16 - 64 with health issues is 7.3m and much larger than all those above.
1. It's far too early to have an inquiry. Can't you see we're in the middle of trying to deal with the bloody thing? 2. Let's wait until it's all over. Only then can we assess who did well or not. 3. The second/third wave is really not the time to have an inquiry. It's a distraction. We need to have all hands to the pump. 4. Any inquiry must also include all the things we did right. Our vaccination policy was world-beating. 5. The PM cannot be responsible for everything. The people must take their share of the blame. 6. Inquiries take too long and who are judges to understand these things. 7. Apportioning blame does not achieve anything. 8. Lessons will be learned without the need for an inquiry. 9. An inquiry will be used by Brexit-haters to get at Boris. 10. We've got through this. Do we really need to rake over the ashes? 11. This is a distraction. We need to focus on "X" which is what really matters to voters. 12. The voters will have their say at the next GE.
1. It's far too early to have an inquiry. Can't you see we're in the middle of trying to deal with the bloody thing? 2. Let's wait until it's all over. Only then can we assess who did well or not. 3. The second/third wave is really not the time to have an inquiry. It's a distraction. We need to have all hands to the pump. 4. Any inquiry must also include all the things we did right. Our vaccination policy was world-beating. 5. The PM cannot be responsible for everything. The people must take their share of the blame. 6. Inquiries take too long and who are judges to understand these things. 7. Apportioning blame does not achieve anything. 8. Lessons will be learned without the need for an inquiry. 9. An inquiry will be used by Brexit-haters to get at Boris. 10. We've got through this. Do we really need to rake over the ashes? 11. This is a distraction. We need to focus on "X" which is what really matters to voters. 12. The voters will have their say at the next GE.
The Daily Rant gets lots of often justified criticism, but during the pandemic I have to give them credit for doing a decent job of searching the pre-print arxiv sites and even if their headlines about the papers can be sensationalized they always provide the link to the actual paper. The likes of the BBC rarely do.
On topic, the deaths are a tragedy - let there be no doubt about that, whatsoever - and with swifter decisions by the Government the death toll now might "only" be in the 65-75,000 range rather than at the 108,000 mark. But, it'd never have been zero; this going to be a global catastrophe as soon as the virus got loose.
However, let there be no mistake: that's not what this thread header is really about; it's about the author wanting the Prime Minister gone because of his role in Brexit and as cheerleader for Brexit - nothing more, nothing less. Covid is merely a useful stick to beat him with. If there was any doubt about that the mentioning of Dan Hannan gives it away.
I will mourn with close friends of mine who've experienced personal tragedy, advocate policies that help us rebuild and mitigate the long-term effects on our children and young people, and I will do what I can to influence the policy debate to see that such a calamity never visits us again.
But, I don't have much time for emotional blackmail and cheap politics - and I say that as someone who didn't want Boris for PM in the first place, and still don't think he's up to the job.
By your own estimate is an avoidable death toll of 30,000 to 40,000. Now, what do you think should be done about a government responsible for such an appalling death toll?
Answers not including the word Brexit would be much appreciated.
This crisis isn't over yet. I think the numbers will tell a more complex story than you think when it is.
I think the Government should (must) commission a full independent review into the lessons learned from the pandemic, particularly on transmission vectors, containment, the role of international travel, track & trace, the effectiveness of lockdowns, the tragedy of care homes, and the resilience of the NHS. It should do this in tandem with the economic, social and political factors in play too, and be supported by reasoned analysis that allows the factors to be balanced together. It should also look at lazy pre-Covid assumptions made by ministers and Whitehall that, despite this being top of the national risk register, it would be just like a flu pandemic - confirmation bias did all the work to convince them that nothing special was needed on top.
If that commission identifies gross negligence or incompetence by this PM in the story of Covid then, yes, this PM should honourably take full responsibility for that and resign; it won't bother me, I was never impressed by Boris in the first place.
However, if the criteria is solely unnecessary extra deaths then so should the EU Commission resign, and many continental politicians, who prioritised saving money over early vaccine procurement, thus guaranteeing many more tragedies in the months to come.
Funnily enough, I don't hear you mention much about them.
The EU didn't get into its mess like that, though, did it? If anything it was prioritising equity that led to their problems, and the EU itself didn't muscle into the matter. Germany was relatively quick off the mark and had its heads of agreement in place with AZN last spring, for 400 million doses with delivery starting late 2020, as part of a consortium with Italy, France and Holland.
It was only when other countries, led by Belgium, complained that every European country going it alone could leave some of the smaller ones out in the cold that Germany, as an attempt to be helpful, suggested that the procurement process be handed over to the EU. Who therefore re-started relatively late. Big mistake by the Germans - and the EU performance subsequently has been risible - but it wasn't desperation to save money nor lack of initial speed that created the problem.
Yep. Poor execution of the right approach. The notion of 27 countries in Europe doing their own thing on vaccines is sub-optimal. But it was very poor execution and the upshot is unfortunate in 2 ways. First and foremost, it will cost the lives of many EU citizens. Second, it is grist to the mill of europhobes throughout the continent. Domestic Leaver triumphalism is irritating but of no great consequence because we are not EU members. I'm thinking of sentiment in places like Italy and France and (especially) Germany. The thought of Germany turning against the EU and deciding to "break free" and pursue a narrow "national interest" does not fill me with joy. I prefer the Big D to be the sort of country that, as with the vaccine, allows the collective interest to influence decisions.
A further thought occurs. Would the EU's vaccine result have been better if the UK were still a player in Brussels? I suspect it would have been. In which case we have here an example of Brexit damaging the EU in quite a grave way. There could be more of this to come. Probably the EU will survive and prosper without us, I hope and think so, but who can be sure? When I voted Remain it was because I thought Brexit would be bad for Britain and would be bad for the EU. If anything the latter was my main fear. This vaccine shambles and its potential aftermath puts me right back in that mindset.
Apologies in advance, but you've inadvertently triggered me
The thing that bugged me (other than some of the obvious, much of which covered in the video, it was fun enough) was the weirdness around all the black toffs. I'm not bothered that many in the cast were black - not really bothered by the ethnicity of a character, completely fine with Dev Patel as Copperfield, for example, I'm cool with a black, Asian or female Bond. After finding the unexplained preponderance of black toffs in the first episode a bit jarring, I got used to it. The fact that they were black went unremarked and I decided it was simply being ignored. Fine. Afterall, who cares, although the lack of Asian toffs did seem odd. But then in one episode there's a conversation between two major (black) characters in which one warns the other that their newfound elevation (thanks to the Queen, apparently, in Bridgerton-land) is not certain to continue, tackling head on - in an implausible way - the large number of black upper classes.
So, why not: (i) Just have people of all ethnic groups scattered throughout the cast and ignore it (as stated, I don't care and it wasn't the only unrealistic thing). It becomes completely unimportant. or (ii) Remove the setting from Georgian London and shove it in some fictional kingdom, Bridgerton-land where ethnic mixing went unremarked, even hundreds of years ago. You can keep the sub-plot of a queen struggling with her husbands mental health issues and the subjugation of women.
PS: Does this make me un-woke? Asleep?
It doesn't make you woke, un-woke or anything like that but it does show that we all have problems with our suspension of disbelief when it comes to ethnicity.
I posted on here last year the example of Saoirse Ronan's portrayal of Mary Queen of Scots. The real Mary lived in France between the ages of 5 and 18 and there is no way she would have had the broad Scots accent that the film gave her. Elizabeth I of England was absolutely no Margot Robbie and, at the time of the events portrayed, the wrong age. Yet the only issue that grated in terms of departure from historical truth was the amount of melanin in Adrian Lester's skin. So, I was okay with Mary sounding completely wrong, I was okay with Elizabeth being several orders of magnitiude better looking (and younger) than she would have been, but I wasn't okay with Lord Randolph being a bit darker than he would have been.
That's unconcious bias, racism, on my part. If Lord Randolph had been played by someone with a different hair colour, several inches shorter, with one eye it would not have passed notice if his skin colour was right. We only seem to care when the actor has the wrong skin tone.
Looking at the recent slides from government, it seems we might finally have some data on hospitalisations by age.
My 'back-of-a-fag packet, quick, not certified, not even checked, throw them out there to see what PBers think' calculations are in red ink.
Looks like roughly 70% of all hospitalisations are 60+.
Thoughts?
EDIT: note that this is percentage of the sample, (approx 52k) not percentage of total hospitalisations!
Looks interesting.
A handy column to add at the end would be cumulative by age. EG 0.92 0-4, 1.15 5-9 etc
Unless I'm misreading it 18.8% of all hospitalisations are under 50, which just goes to show that although prioritising the elderly is right there should be absolutely no let-up whatsoever once they're done. Once they're done prioritising the 40s should be done straight away, then my own age group of the thirties and so on. That will protect thousands of hospitalisations, let alone other non-hospitalisation risks.
Comments
The way its going they will have to play matches via putting up a net in the corridor of the quarantine hotel and have them play rallies by hit the ball out of their room doors.
https://twitter.com/alexkealy/status/1357283295441137664?s=20
'Methinks the Lady doth protest too much'.
Someone who starts their posts "I'm not a Boris fan but...." is bound to raise an eyebrow. 'A Rose were it not a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet'
Excess deaths are great for answering one question: how unusual is this year compared to the recent average (say 5 years). It enables answering questions such as were all those who died with Covid due to die anyway (nowhere near) and also picking up the net effect of other gains/losses in mortality.
Also, if we stick with the standard last five year baseline for excess deaths, then we'll see negative excess deaths (hopefully!) for 2022-2024 at least due to 2020/21 raising the baseline, even if deaths are actually completely normal for the long term trend.
Lots of parents of PBers being done at the moment, those 10m vaccines have had to go somewhere!
Where we will finally be placed in the grim league tables of death when this is all over is, of course, far from clear. We know from experience last year that some countries which seemed initially to be doing very well ended up with a particularly bad second wave, and vice versa. I would not be at all surprised if the combination of the spread of newer variants and the poor performance on vaccinations in some European countries mean that other countries will come out of this with a death toll similar to or worse than ours; in many cases, they too have made avoidable mistakes. Nonetheless, the prime responsibility of the British government is to British citizens, and I'm afraid that it is inescapably true that they have not discharged that responsibility well, with the welcome exception of the vaccine procurement and rollout.
Earlier in the pandemic it was clear that Germany did test handling better than the UK and we sought to learn lessons that we can. As the pandemic nears the end its clear the UK is handling vaccines better than other nations - they can and should learn from us and we should try and help share our expertise.
The idea one nation is entirely bad - or good - is an utter nonsense. Improvements won't come from complete polarisation, they will come from trying to objectively learn what is good and what could be better.
https://twitter.com/chchristiaens/status/1357243982896451587?s=20
Trying to do an exact leaderboard as sky did the other day is pointless. It is really irrevelant if the UK is slightly ahead of Spain or Italy on one metric, but slightly behind them on another.
What we can say is there is some broad buckets ranging from excellent to absolutely totally f##king awful.
The UK is one level below the "absolutely totally f##king awful". There are a number of other European countries in that rough bracket now or one below, especially with 2nd wave. Germany having a bad 2nd wave, but probably still two to three steps below.
The problems were mostly those of communication - the players didn't realise they'd be stuck in an hotel room for a fortnight eating room service, and thought they'd be able to train and use the hotel's facilities.
F1 decided to pass on the Melbourne event, because they couldn't work with the quarantine requirements, so it's not exactly news how strict the Aussies are.
Hope the organisers of the Euros are paying attention - getting tennis players to the tournament is going to be like herding sheep, whereas footballers will be like herding cats.
https://twitter.com/hildabast/status/1357291602142662657?s=20
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1357293898830401536
Catastrophic decision making is a feature of this government
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-559325
£200 fine.....he probably paid more than that for his normal trims.
Surely we're vaccinating everyone now as it is. The virus is heading towards eradication, there shouldn't be any more major surges going forwards. So how is a trial now going to find much meaningful data?
Surely a trial in Brazil or South Africa etc would make more sense?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/
50-54 there are 4.66m (highest)
70-74 there are 3.32m (lowest)
Just calculating the 13500 cases up compared at r 1.7 to r 1 on a weekly transmission rate show so getting to a 5th reinfection by the end of December leads to round 250,000 total cases well over 100,000 daily cases for R1.7 compared to total around 70,000 cases and still 13500 for R1
The thing that bugged me (other than some of the obvious, much of which covered in the video, it was fun enough) was the weirdness around all the black toffs. I'm not bothered that many in the cast were black - not really bothered by the ethnicity of a character, completely fine with Dev Patel as Copperfield, for example, I'm cool with a black, Asian or female Bond. After finding the unexplained preponderance of black toffs in the first episode a bit jarring, I got used to it. The fact that they were black went unremarked and I decided it was simply being ignored. Fine. Afterall, who cares, although the lack of Asian toffs did seem odd. But then in one episode there's a conversation between two major (black) characters in which one warns the other that their newfound elevation (thanks to the Queen, apparently, in Bridgerton-land) is not certain to continue, tackling head on - in an implausible way - the large number of black upper classes.
So, why not:
(i) Just have people of all ethnic groups scattered throughout the cast and ignore it (as stated, I don't care and it wasn't the only unrealistic thing). It becomes completely unimportant.
or
(ii) Remove the setting from Georgian London and shove it in some fictional kingdom, Bridgerton-land where ethnic mixing went unremarked, even hundreds of years ago. You can keep the sub-plot of a queen struggling with her husbands mental health issues and the subjugation of women.
PS: Does this make me un-woke? Asleep?
Once everyone's vaccinated then even if its still around, it won't be like the last year. With vaccines that are 90% effective, almost 100% effective at avoiding hospitalisations and over 50% effective at reducing onward transmission then this actually will become "like the flu".
/pedant
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1357297885830918144
Have they changed their practice since we left membership? Under English (not sure about Welsh or Scottish) Law you need Planning Permission to display (I think 'publicly', but that may also mean 'outside') a flag of an International Organisation of which we are not a member.
Loophole is to pretend you are displaying the "Council of Europe" flag, which is physically the same. Noticeable that Holyrood call it the "European" flag in their flag policy.
What about a Saltire and Union Flag in a routine press conference of Scottish Gov?
...A survey was made of epidemics in boarding schools in which some of the pupils had been vaccinated, in six with commercial polyvalent vaccine and in five with HK; there was a lower incidence of influenza in two schools vaccinated 2 or 4 weeks earlier with HK vaccine...
The Merck vaccine, which was specific to the new strain, might have been effective ?
Knowledge was, of course, massively more limited back then, and it certainly was a different world.
(Note we're still trying to develop a universal - polyvalent - flu vaccine which is effective, fifty years later.)
Health minister Vaughan Gething says experts are carrying out a "detailed and forensic investigation into each of these cases to discover when and how each person became infected with the South African variant strain and whether there is any evidence of wider community spread".
Opposition parties have called for widescale testing in response to the cases found in Conwy, Anglesey and Neath Port Talbot.
"Surge testing" is taking place door-to-door in some small communities in England where at least 105 cases of the variant have been found.
But Gething says ministers were not "going to look to an approach that has whole community testing across a whole local authority area".
---------
Funny how in England, Labour were moaning that the large scale surge testing in the 8 areas wasn't enough. In Wales, not going to bother at all.
The reason for the trial, of course, is to find out whether a combination is even more effective - as some Russian scientists have been proposing.
The Iraq war each death was major news and rightly so.
However if the numbers were as high as co vid 19, or as high as the USA in Vietnam it would have been a different media reaction.
There seems an indifference to over 100000 deaths, like many are numb to so many .Unless it is one of their own family.
I guess the government will have an inquiry about how the pandemic was handled many years down the line, which will hopefully prepare us better for the next one.
That's why there is a huge need of having a full inquiry to establish what we did wrong in the first and second waves and what we can do to be prepared for a repeat.
Areas of weakness for the UK that need to be planned for:
1. Border controls including halting roll-on and roll-off transit temporarily. What kind of issues will that result in, do we need to have a new strategic reserve of basic foodstuffs to enable this.
2. Having surge capacity of hotel rooms for a quarantine system that can be implemented over night.
3. A new insurance scheme for paying for the above capacity, something like ATOL that is added onto all flight tickets.
4. The isolate part of track, trace, isolate needs to be improved significantly, what can be done on this. What incentives should we have for isolation etc...
5. How can the vaccine procurement scheme be further streamlined. Are we able to effectively queue jump again for newly formulated mutation busting vaccines.
There's loads more and we need to figure out answers to these questions very, very fast because we haven't got a lot of time until the third wave of vaccine resistant variants hits these shores and we're back into the same bullshit pattern of lockdown and wait for vaccines.
(1) anyone who thought that you could become a third country with regard to the EU without NTBs isn't really up with reality and
(2) a lot of the critics are emulating the DUP by opposing everything and proposing nothing serious and precise about what is better. Which decisions. What improvements. How implemented.
BTW yes, we have been told untruths by government.
If the results of this trial is good then would that mean mix and match can be approved based on these trials alone, or would there then need to be a Phase III? Or is Phase III no longer needed since its already been tested previously?
(from https://www.nature.com/articles/ncpuro0294 )
Pro-tip: never let anyone without a good grasp of statistics (and common sense) loose with SPSS. In fact, perhaps never let anyone loose with SPSS. It lets you do the most ridiculous things.
A more practical policy, if you are determined to keep lorry drivers out of the country would be to change the cabs either before embarking or just after landing.
Practical as in the sense of an incredibly expensive, vast logistical operation that will stuff up trade - but probably cheaper and more possible than stopping all ro-ro freight.
One of the problems with this whole thing has been a failure to follow basic decision making comms procedure:
1. Context
2. Options
3. Decision
4. Consequences
5. Expected outcomes
6. Actual outcomes
This would enable the public to understand *why* we are doing what we are doing, *what* we chose not to do (and why), and *whether* what we are doing is being effective. It would also allow us all to participate in ongoing lessons learned.
This is basic stuff. But instead, we are taking a "political communications" approach
1. Manage the politics not the problem
2. Bury bad news if possible
3. Use the news cycle to move on ASAP
At what point do we say that anti-vaccine propaganda is a threat to public health? (leaving aside the particularly unpleasant nature of this literature).
So the top group was split in 5 and had in the millions 4.1, 3.8, 2.3, 3.2, 1.2.
My group 65 - 69 has 2.9m
The next group 16 - 64 with health issues is 7.3m and much larger than all those above.
And if it proves safe and effective will make considerably easier the task of giving both shots to our own population, as well as others.
If you don't want any NTBs then you should have voted to Remain. If you did vote Remain, then accept you lost and there will be some NTBs.
The number is simply too great to comprehend in the midst of it.
The lack of action at the End of September/beginning of October is a key point for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I have agreed with you a lot lately.
But how many vaccines has the EU?
You cannot make a Brexit with silk gloves.
Gratitude is an illness suffered by dogs and remoaners.
etc
That goes back to my original question then, given the way case numbers are cratering and that should only continue post-vaccination hopefully, then do you think we will get sufficient infections within the cohorts to get meaningful data?
The irony is surely that hopefully we're in a position where there aren't many infections at all so 800 people might not be sufficient to get meaningful data from? That would be a good problem for us to have, but affect the trial wouldn't it?
Or do you think there's going to continue to be a high enough baseline number of cases for this to work?
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1357301779281674242?s=20
There are source books, apparently. Can't say I'm greatly tempted to read them.
The problem with the header is that it is keen to blame the deaths on Boris (or Mark or Nicola). Well, really just selectively on Boris.
I'd say we need to know what advice the politicians were receiving from modellers/scientists/experts before we can even to begin to assess any blame. I'd say we need to do a proper statistical analysis of comparable countries before we can really assess relative performance.
It is curious how it is the lawyers on the board who are anxious to convict after hearing the case for the prosecution. Meeks has already identified and convicted the "culprits" (his word).
I am not a legal expert, I am scientist (which is why I am outraged by Meeks's rubbish).
My recollection of the law though is that we hear the case for the prosecution & the defence before reaching a verdict.
My 'back-of-a-fag packet, quick, not certified, not even checked, throw them out there to see what PBers think' calculations are in red ink.
Looks like roughly 70% of all hospitalisations are 60+.
Thoughts?
EDIT: note that this is percentage of the sample, (approx 52k) not percentage of total hospitalisations!
https://twitter.com/NickTorfaen/status/1357253406897950723?s=20
What's unknowable is whether our "South African" variant infections actually came from South Africa, or arose here spontaneously (for example, the first "Kent" variant was found in Scotland but squished by the first lockdown), but given its a public health emergency, the 'precautionary principle" would appear a better strategy than "hope for the best"
"The study team will not be offering diagnostic COVID-19 testing as part of this trial" (plain English summary)
"Characterisation of COVID-19 infections experienced following administration of vaccine" is present, but onl among secondary outcomes (no. 6 in the list)
Primary outcome measure: "Immunogenicity of COVID-19 vaccines boosted at day 28 in seronegative participants measured using serum level of anti-spike immunoglobulins using ELISA at 56 days "
There are a number of other secondary measures looking at primary outcome at different time points and also at antibodies.
https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/diseases-and-conditions/covid-19-novel-coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines
Similarly Australia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-04/australia-vaccine-rollout-questions-pfizer/13121686
The issue is the hysterical response, threats to leave the site and criticising the author rather than the merits or not of the argument.
1. It's far too early to have an inquiry. Can't you see we're in the middle of trying to deal with the bloody thing?
2. Let's wait until it's all over. Only then can we assess who did well or not.
3. The second/third wave is really not the time to have an inquiry. It's a distraction. We need to have all hands to the pump.
4. Any inquiry must also include all the things we did right. Our vaccination policy was world-beating.
5. The PM cannot be responsible for everything. The people must take their share of the blame.
6. Inquiries take too long and who are judges to understand these things.
7. Apportioning blame does not achieve anything.
8. Lessons will be learned without the need for an inquiry.
9. An inquiry will be used by Brexit-haters to get at Boris.
10. We've got through this. Do we really need to rake over the ashes?
11. This is a distraction. We need to focus on "X" which is what really matters to voters.
12. The voters will have their say at the next GE.
You're welcome. Please feel free to add any more.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9223113/Risk-getting-coronavirus-ATMs-petrol-pumps-pedestrian-crossing-buttons-low-study.html
The Daily Rant gets lots of often justified criticism, but during the pandemic I have to give them credit for doing a decent job of searching the pre-print arxiv sites and even if their headlines about the papers can be sensationalized they always provide the link to the actual paper. The likes of the BBC rarely do.
A further thought occurs. Would the EU's vaccine result have been better if the UK were still a player in Brussels? I suspect it would have been. In which case we have here an example of Brexit damaging the EU in quite a grave way. There could be more of this to come. Probably the EU will survive and prosper without us, I hope and think so, but who can be sure? When I voted Remain it was because I thought Brexit would be bad for Britain and would be bad for the EU. If anything the latter was my main fear. This vaccine shambles and its potential aftermath puts me right back in that mindset.
I posted on here last year the example of Saoirse Ronan's portrayal of Mary Queen of Scots. The real Mary lived in France between the ages of 5 and 18 and there is no way she would have had the broad Scots accent that the film gave her. Elizabeth I of England was absolutely no Margot Robbie and, at the time of the events portrayed, the wrong age. Yet the only issue that grated in terms of departure from historical truth was the amount of melanin in Adrian Lester's skin. So, I was okay with Mary sounding completely wrong, I was okay with Elizabeth being several orders of magnitiude better looking (and younger) than she would have been, but I wasn't okay with Lord Randolph being a bit darker than he would have been.
That's unconcious bias, racism, on my part. If Lord Randolph had been played by someone with a different hair colour, several inches shorter, with one eye it would not have passed notice if his skin colour was right. We only seem to care when the actor has the wrong skin tone.
A handy column to add at the end would be cumulative by age. EG 0.92 0-4, 1.15 5-9 etc
Unless I'm misreading it 18.8% of all hospitalisations are under 50, which just goes to show that although prioritising the elderly is right there should be absolutely no let-up whatsoever once they're done. Once they're done prioritising the 40s should be done straight away, then my own age group of the thirties and so on. That will protect thousands of hospitalisations, let alone other non-hospitalisation risks.