Johnson is refusing to rule out a lockdown extension.
Panicky Hancock presser at 5...
Over a week-end, we are now almost at the post vaccine lockdown stage.
So...about those pubs....
WTF are you withering on about today?
We are not post vaccine by any means of the imagination. Getting the first dose to over 70 year olds is a very good first part of the vaccination process, but it's just under a quarter of the vulnerable doses that need to be done.
I doubt even you would deny there is an attempt today to discredit the vaccine program as a way out of lockdown. By some in the media and some in SAGE. The government? who knows.
Bit Johnson refused to rule out a lockdown extension, even though we are ahead of schedule in vaccination, and on every measure the disease is receding.
The facts have changed for the worse, and people have recognised that. The world does not owe you a "yes" to your constant refrain of "are we nearly there yet?" Things are what they are.
What a credulous person you are, Ishmael.
SAGE could tell you to stick your head up your backside and you would be kissing your own ring before any of us could say jack robinson.
The government has taken away many freedoms our forebears fought and died for. They put 67 million people under house arrest. They do owe us that explanation. Big time. Yesterday.
Whoa, my parents are in Rutland and just got vaccinated. They were right at the bottom of the league tables until yesterday.
Hopefully something like a single care home outbreak, the relative numbers being high because of the small denominator, only 38k population in the county.
It really isn't very good. As you say it should be positiva but that doesn't mean positive in the required sense anyway, it only gets to mean that after you've invented negative numbers, which the Romans didn't.
POSITIVUM MUTATIO is clearly the Harry Potter spell for finally eradicating a virus
Mr Murrell less than convincing today, it has to be said.
The suggested referral is ironic given that the Crown Office is itself in the murk up to its oxters, with calls for the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, to resign over the Rangers shambles.
It's all getting very banana republic up here. Maybe that should be turnip republic, in deference to malc?
How the hell does this not all massively blow up, a few weeks before the elections in Scotland?
Because like the Schleswig Holstein question, nobody can understand what the hell is going on except some guy who is mad, and some other bod who died.
I do wish someone like Keir would come out and ask questions about governance in Scotland.
Isn’t there an Ombudsman who can step in?
I don't know about Scotland, but the Welsh Ombudsman (Nick Bennett) was appointed by Labour.
He is a Labour Party Member and previously shared a flat with a Labour AM and ran a business with a Labour AM. He also does not understand the meaning of the phrase "possible conflict of interest".
So, he is a complete waste of space if you are criticising a Labour politician, a Labour Council or the Labour Government.
Is this correct from the thread header ? ...This leads to extremely effective vaccines. When Oxford/AstraZeneca used a Chimpanzee virus to make their vaccine, they relied on altering an existing virus so it looked enough like Covid to fool the body’s immune system. But the tolerances are always small with this kind of approach, because the adapted virus still had to carry a bunch of genetic material related to the original (Chimpanzee) virus...
That's not how the Oxford vaccine works. It uses a modified chimpanzee virus as a carrier so that it's not recognised by the immune system. The virus is replication incompetent, but get's into human calls, which it them instructs to produce copies of the spike protein, as do the mRNA vaccines. It is the copies of the spike proteins produced by the vaccinated patient's cells which stimulate the immune system in both cases.
In terms of modifications to the vaccine, you're still altering a DNA template with a different version of the spike protein, so again not a wildly different process from modifying the mRNA vaccines.
The manufacturing process is, of course, very different, and it's easier to reuse the mRNA delivery technology in subjects who've already been exposed to it, as the lipid package isn't going to be recognised by the immune system in the way that previous exposure to a viral vector is going to prime it to recognise that reused vector.
Yes, the mRNA vector is the big win from this pandemic. Robert is absolutely right about how big of an advancement it is. The CureVac version seems to only need normal refrigeration too which seems to be why the government has got GSK to buy it and manufacture it domestically.
The Novavax vaccine uses a lipid layer delivery and viral proteins so it should also be very good candidate for annual booster shots.
One of the other uncommented (but really quite big) aspects of this is how the mRNA guys are working to get manufacturing under license done. CureVac has its own production facilities, but it's also got GSK and Bayer to manufacture its vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech is using Novartis and Sanofi.
This has to be enormously positive for medium term capacity.
Mr Murrell less than convincing today, it has to be said.
The suggested referral is ironic given that the Crown Office is itself in the murk up to its oxters, with calls for the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, to resign over the Rangers shambles.
It's all getting very banana republic up here. Maybe that should be turnip republic, in deference to malc?
How the hell does this not all massively blow up, a few weeks before the elections in Scotland?
I love this line - from Murrell about Salmond’s casual visit
“I just thought he was popping in for a chat about, you know, any, any matter.”
There are times when the most anodyne words simply scream: I AM LYING
This is such a time
Salmond lives a three and a half hour drive away. How often do you "pop in" from a 7 hour round-trip?
When you're so excited you get your UK boosting and your Nat bashing all muddled up.
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
The man so awful he was removed as a Chief Justice, twice, for judicial misconduct, and gifted a senate seat to the Democrats in Alabama?
An inspired choice for Republicans.
The very same.
Was a great political betting event.
According to Wiki, here are some prospective candidates for Richard Shelby's US Senate seat in Alabama in 2022:
Republicans: Robert Aderholt, incumbent U.S. Representative for Alabama's 4th congressional district Will Ainsworth, Lieutenant Governor of Alabama Katie Britt, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Richard Shelby Mo Brooks, incumbent U.S. Representative for Alabama's 5th congressional district Bradley Byrne, former U.S. representative for Alabama's 1st congressional district and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020 John Merrill, Alabama Secretary of State and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020 Gary Palmer, incumbent U.S. Representative for Alabama's 6th congressional district
Democrats Anthony Daniels, Minority Leader of the Alabama House of Representatives Christopher England, state representative and chair of the Alabama Democratic Party
Johnson is refusing to rule out a lockdown extension.
Panicky Hancock presser at 5...
Over a week-end, we are now almost at the post vaccine lockdown stage.
So...about those pubs....
WTF are you withering on about today?
We are not post vaccine by any means of the imagination. Getting the first dose to over 70 year olds is a very good first part of the vaccination process, but it's just under a quarter of the vulnerable doses that need to be done.
I doubt even you would deny there is an attempt today to discredit the vaccine program as a way out of lockdown. By some in the media and some in SAGE. The government? who knows.
Bit Johnson refused to rule out a lockdown extension, even though we are ahead of schedule in vaccination, and on every measure the disease is receding.
The facts have changed for the worse, and people have recognised that. The world does not owe you a "yes" to your constant refrain of "are we nearly there yet?" Things are what they are.
What a credulous person you are, Ishmael.
SAGE could tell you to stick your head up your backside and you would be kissing your own ring before any of us could say jack robinson.
The government has taken away many freedoms our forebears fought and died for. They put 67 million people under house arrest. They do owe us that explanation. Big time. Yesterday.
The speed at which Goodwin has transformed from being an interesting, respected, objective academic commentator to being a pro-government, anti-woke shill is even more impressive than the speed of our vaccine rollout.
Is he one of those types that have been radicalised online? Though perhaps there's been a bit of de-radicalising going on given he's deleted tweets relating to Trump.
Shit. The truly alarming thing there is what I feared most: past infection with ‘normal’ Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. This bug is Satanic
If the Safferbug runs riot in the UK this spring we will be back to square one. They won’t be able to tweak any of the vaccines in time. People will catch it again who’ve already had it. People vaxxed with AZ will also get it. Hopefully they will only get mild/moderate cases, but we don’t know that yet, for sure.
I don’t want to come over all Black Rook but this is ominous. To me it suggests lockdown until Autumn. And yet I just don’t think the economy can hack that, or the nation’s mental health. So what gives?
All vaccines (including the AZ one) still seem to protect near-perfectly against severe illness and provide some protection against mild or moderate illness (bear in mind that the AZ trial in SA used the worst possible dosing regimen - one with 54% efficacy normally compared to the 82% of the 12 week regimen).
The current lockdown should squish all forms down to a low level, including the SA bug. With more and faster testing available, and deciding which countries to open up to should obviate most of the need for any lockdown.
And some restrictions are more effective than others - simply banning gatherings over 1000 people (arguably you could still have them if you had reliable and available LFTs that every attendee had to pass) decreases R by an average of 33%.
On top of that, they'll probably have tweaks to some or most vaccines within three months (before many of us are due our second doses, anyway).
Spot on Andy, but why let the facts get in the way of some attention-grabbing hysteria from Leon? Cruel of you.
On this, You Andy and I are as one. How nice.
A lot of very, very irresponsible stuff in the news today from outlets that should know better. Let's hope the government learns a lesson. Some people do want lockdown to go on for as long as possible, whatever the efficacy.
It is quite disconcerting (albeit my take is that it's the standard "if it bleeds it leads" drive from the news media. Bad news gets more clicks and attention than good news, so slant things badly to get the attention).
Would you mind coming out with something implausible or extreme so I can go back to my normal position? I'd appreciate it.
Time to award President Trump the Nobel Prizes for Medicine and for Economics for the strength of America's Covid response, as well as the one for Peace.
Is this correct from the thread header ? ...This leads to extremely effective vaccines. When Oxford/AstraZeneca used a Chimpanzee virus to make their vaccine, they relied on altering an existing virus so it looked enough like Covid to fool the body’s immune system. But the tolerances are always small with this kind of approach, because the adapted virus still had to carry a bunch of genetic material related to the original (Chimpanzee) virus...
That's not how the Oxford vaccine works. It uses a modified chimpanzee virus as a carrier so that it's not recognised by the immune system. The virus is replication incompetent, but get's into human calls, which it them instructs to produce copies of the spike protein, as do the mRNA vaccines. It is the copies of the spike proteins produced by the vaccinated patient's cells which stimulate the immune system in both cases.
In terms of modifications to the vaccine, you're still altering a DNA template with a different version of the spike protein, so again not a wildly different process from modifying the mRNA vaccines.
The manufacturing process is, of course, very different, and it's easier to reuse the mRNA delivery technology in subjects who've already been exposed to it, as the lipid package isn't going to be recognised by the immune system in the way that previous exposure to a viral vector is going to prime it to recognise that reused vector.
Yes, the mRNA vector is the big win from this pandemic. Robert is absolutely right about how big of an advancement it is. The CureVac version seems to only need normal refrigeration too which seems to be why the government has got GSK to buy it and manufacture it domestically.
The Novavax vaccine uses a lipid layer delivery and viral proteins so it should also be very good candidate for annual booster shots.
One of the other uncommented (but really quite big) aspects of this is how the mRNA guys are working to get manufacturing under license done. CureVac has its own production facilities, but it's also got GSK and Bayer to manufacture its vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech is using Novartis and Sanofi.
This has to be enormously positive for medium term capacity.
The CureVac deal with GSK is absolutely mega for the UK, it gives us an effective domestic mRNA vaccine. Bayer seems to have the rights for Germanic manufacturing and CureVac have held those distribution rights. It's definitely not a coincidence that GSK bought up the non-Germanic rights and then a few days later the UK government announced a long term domestic manufacturing deal that is specifically intended for rapid roll out of mutation busting booster shots. CureVac could also become a best-in-class mRNA vaccine because it is easy to store and transport. Really hoping they get a good P3 result up there with Pfizer and Moderna because the whole of Europe would benefit given the EU order of 300m doses for Q4 delivery.
Whoa, my parents are in Rutland and just got vaccinated. They were right at the bottom of the league tables until yesterday.
Hopefully something like a single care home outbreak, the relative numbers being high because of the small denominator, only 38k population in the county.
It really isn't very good. As you say it should be positiva but that doesn't mean positive in the required sense anyway, it only gets to mean that after you've invented negative numbers, which the Romans didn't.
Yes, it's impressively awful in sense as well as grammar if it's meant to be classical Latin.
Perhaps they should have gone with 'meliora sequor', inverting the excuse for criminality which Ovid gives Medea: video meliora proboque | deteriora sequor.
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
It’s important to ask why the vaccine taskforce seems to have worked, while track and trace and Cummings’s moonshot both failed.
Shit. The truly alarming thing there is what I feared most: past infection with ‘normal’ Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. This bug is Satanic
If the Safferbug runs riot in the UK this spring we will be back to square one. They won’t be able to tweak any of the vaccines in time. People will catch it again who’ve already had it. People vaxxed with AZ will also get it. Hopefully they will only get mild/moderate cases, but we don’t know that yet, for sure.
I don’t want to come over all Black Rook but this is ominous. To me it suggests lockdown until Autumn. And yet I just don’t think the economy can hack that, or the nation’s mental health. So what gives?
We've already got booster shots for it on the way and daily capacity to vaccinate 1m people per day.
We also have a long term bet with Valneva and CureVac.
We're also investing in world leading mutation busting modelling to predict viral evolutionary pathways so that future vaccines are one step ahead of the game.
What this means is that the government needs to get serious about border controls. Have a completely open economy and I'd also suggest a two island approach with Ireland. Once we've got the infrastructure in place to rapidly immunise people to variants with CureVac we can begin to roll out vaccine passports for overseas travel.
Is this correct from the thread header ? ...This leads to extremely effective vaccines. When Oxford/AstraZeneca used a Chimpanzee virus to make their vaccine, they relied on altering an existing virus so it looked enough like Covid to fool the body’s immune system. But the tolerances are always small with this kind of approach, because the adapted virus still had to carry a bunch of genetic material related to the original (Chimpanzee) virus...
That's not how the Oxford vaccine works. It uses a modified chimpanzee virus as a carrier so that it's not recognised by the immune system. The virus is replication incompetent, but get's into human calls, which it them instructs to produce copies of the spike protein, as do the mRNA vaccines. It is the copies of the spike proteins produced by the vaccinated patient's cells which stimulate the immune system in both cases.
In terms of modifications to the vaccine, you're still altering a DNA template with a different version of the spike protein, so again not a wildly different process from modifying the mRNA vaccines.
The manufacturing process is, of course, very different, and it's easier to reuse the mRNA delivery technology in subjects who've already been exposed to it, as the lipid package isn't going to be recognised by the immune system in the way that previous exposure to a viral vector is going to prime it to recognise that reused vector.
Yes, the mRNA vector is the big win from this pandemic. Robert is absolutely right about how big of an advancement it is. The CureVac version seems to only need normal refrigeration too which seems to be why the government has got GSK to buy it and manufacture it domestically.
The Novavax vaccine uses a lipid layer delivery and viral proteins so it should also be very good candidate for annual booster shots.
One of the other uncommented (but really quite big) aspects of this is how the mRNA guys are working to get manufacturing under license done. CureVac has its own production facilities, but it's also got GSK and Bayer to manufacture its vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech is using Novartis and Sanofi.
This has to be enormously positive for medium term capacity.
The CureVac deal with GSK is absolutely mega for the UK, it gives us an effective domestic mRNA vaccine. Bayer seems to have the rights for Germanic manufacturing and CureVac have held those distribution rights. It's definitely not a coincidence that GSK bought up the non-Germanic rights and then a few days later the UK government announced a long term domestic manufacturing deal that is specifically intended for rapid roll out of mutation busting booster shots. CureVac could also become a best-in-class mRNA vaccine because it is easy to store and transport. Really hoping they get a good P3 result up there with Pfizer and Moderna because the whole of Europe would benefit given the EU order of 300m doses for Q4 delivery.
Absolutely: unfortunately CureVac results are probably not going to be out until end-April at the earliest. The good news is that (AIUI) they have already tweaked their formulation for the Brazilian and SA variants.
(Hopefully they - and GSK - are already ramping up production on the assumption that results will be good.)
The man so awful he was removed as a Chief Justice, twice, for judicial misconduct, and gifted a senate seat to the Democrats in Alabama?
An inspired choice for Republicans.
The very same.
Was a great political betting event.
Sell Boeing. Shelby was the driving force behind the Senate Launch System. Once he is gone, a lot of the blocks to ditching SLS go.
Ten minutes after the last one of Starship and New Glenn reach orbit, SLS is dead meat.
Conceivably if just Starship does.
SLS is basically dead now - they couldn't light their candle for more than a minute, as their competition keeps improving. Bet on SpaceX, despite Elon being a twat.
It would be better for us that the EU should not fail.
The problem is the issues we identified with the EU: it's sclerosis, it's lack of accountability, it's lack of democratic feedback, it's slow nature etc etc etc are all coming to the fore here.
Just because we identified the problems doesn't mean we want those problems to be there.
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
The government has pretty much already achieved its target of jabbing the first four priority groups - not many to go now. You're never going to get to 100%.
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
It’s important to ask why the vaccine taskforce seems to have worked, while track and trace and Cummings’s moonshot both failed.
Except they didn't fail. Testing is at 800k per day now, and the Western world was quite open as to how far they'd allow tracking apps to take hold.
All is not lost. When, globally, the rollout of vaccines has been miniscule, there has still been a significant decrease in cases over the last four weeks accross the world
Whoa, my parents are in Rutland and just got vaccinated. They were right at the bottom of the league tables until yesterday.
Hopefully something like a single care home outbreak, the relative numbers being high because of the small denominator, only 38k population in the county.
Oh wow, I never even knew there was a prison in Rutland. It's right at the northern corner of the county, thankfully well away from my parents in Uppingham - not that they've met another human in weeks, apart from their trips to the vaccine centre.
Apparently, yonks ago, there was a requirement that every county town in England had to build a prison, no matter how small the county was. A number still in place though I suspect most have long been superseded and the sites cleared for housing, night clubs, empty office blocks etc.
The reason the Westgate survived as the only remaining medieval tower into Canterbury was that it was used as the City Gaol - Canterbury being a County Borough technically independent of Kent until the 1974 reforms.
The government has pretty much already achieved its target of jabbing the first four priority groups - not many to go now. You're never going to get to 100%.
Time now to open up Group 5.
(Disclaimer: I have an interest in this...).
P5ers are already getting jabbed in London (because of a lot of refusals, I believe)
Is this correct from the thread header ? ...This leads to extremely effective vaccines. When Oxford/AstraZeneca used a Chimpanzee virus to make their vaccine, they relied on altering an existing virus so it looked enough like Covid to fool the body’s immune system. But the tolerances are always small with this kind of approach, because the adapted virus still had to carry a bunch of genetic material related to the original (Chimpanzee) virus...
That's not how the Oxford vaccine works. It uses a modified chimpanzee virus as a carrier so that it's not recognised by the immune system. The virus is replication incompetent, but get's into human calls, which it them instructs to produce copies of the spike protein, as do the mRNA vaccines. It is the copies of the spike proteins produced by the vaccinated patient's cells which stimulate the immune system in both cases.
In terms of modifications to the vaccine, you're still altering a DNA template with a different version of the spike protein, so again not a wildly different process from modifying the mRNA vaccines.
The manufacturing process is, of course, very different, and it's easier to reuse the mRNA delivery technology in subjects who've already been exposed to it, as the lipid package isn't going to be recognised by the immune system in the way that previous exposure to a viral vector is going to prime it to recognise that reused vector.
Yes, the mRNA vector is the big win from this pandemic. Robert is absolutely right about how big of an advancement it is. The CureVac version seems to only need normal refrigeration too which seems to be why the government has got GSK to buy it and manufacture it domestically.
The Novavax vaccine uses a lipid layer delivery and viral proteins so it should also be very good candidate for annual booster shots.
One of the other uncommented (but really quite big) aspects of this is how the mRNA guys are working to get manufacturing under license done. CureVac has its own production facilities, but it's also got GSK and Bayer to manufacture its vaccine. Pfizer/BioNTech is using Novartis and Sanofi.
This has to be enormously positive for medium term capacity.
The CureVac deal with GSK is absolutely mega for the UK, it gives us an effective domestic mRNA vaccine. Bayer seems to have the rights for Germanic manufacturing and CureVac have held those distribution rights. It's definitely not a coincidence that GSK bought up the non-Germanic rights and then a few days later the UK government announced a long term domestic manufacturing deal that is specifically intended for rapid roll out of mutation busting booster shots. CureVac could also become a best-in-class mRNA vaccine because it is easy to store and transport. Really hoping they get a good P3 result up there with Pfizer and Moderna because the whole of Europe would benefit given the EU order of 300m doses for Q4 delivery.
Absolutely: unfortunately CureVac results are probably not going to be out until end-April at the earliest. The good news is that (AIUI) they have already tweaked their formulation for the Brazilian and SA variants.
(Hopefully they - and GSK - are already ramping up production on the assumption that results will be good.)
With both Curevac and Biontech, German life sciences seem to be dominant. The UK with just a small research effort and Imperial look years behind.
The government has pretty much already achieved its target of jabbing the first four priority groups - not many to go now. You're never going to get to 100%.
Time now to open up Group 5.
(Disclaimer: I have an interest in this...).
P5ers are already getting jabbed in London (because of a lot of refusals, I believe)
Yes, I've got a number of friends who are under 70 and were jabbed over a week ago.
Not sure that is fair. the EU has screwed this one up. For me that is much less of an issue than the ridiculous charade of denial and recrimination against all and sundry. It has all been unedifying to witness and betrayed an element of insecurity about the organisation which quite surprised me.
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
Borders task force next please. Then Tidal power (or power in general) task force.
Shit. The truly alarming thing there is what I feared most: past infection with ‘normal’ Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. This bug is Satanic
If the Safferbug runs riot in the UK this spring we will be back to square one. They won’t be able to tweak any of the vaccines in time. People will catch it again who’ve already had it. People vaxxed with AZ will also get it. Hopefully they will only get mild/moderate cases, but we don’t know that yet, for sure.
I don’t want to come over all Black Rook but this is ominous. To me it suggests lockdown until Autumn. And yet I just don’t think the economy can hack that, or the nation’s mental health. So what gives?
It’s a setback, but you are probably going too far.
The sample size in the new study was small. Of 1749 participants, 42 got sick, of whom 19 had the vaccine and 23 had a placebo, producing an efficacy figure of just 22 per cent.
However, no one became severely ill or died.
That is partly because participants were young – average age 31 – but also because while the vaccine doesn’t appear to prompt a significant immune response in the form of antibodies specific to 501Y.V2, it does still boost a broader immune response in the form of T cells. That also appears to be true of reinfection.
So AstraZeneca believes its vaccine still offers protection against serious illness and death from the variant. The same, with respect to T-Cells, will likely be true of reinfection.
In any case, South Africa has shipments of the Pfizer, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines on order, and all appear to provide protection against the variant, including among over 65s.o.
Finally, if you want some good news from South Africa, look at their case numbers and mortality over the last six weeks. Dropping like a rock.
Yes, the drop in cases and deaths in SA is encouraging. No one seems entirely sure why. Herd immunity in townships has been posited. Tho I also note the SA health minister is warning of a third wave
There is no mystery about the falling case numbers in South Africa. They started a lockdown at the end of December, and surprise surprise, cases peaked around two weeks later.
You’re wrong, I believe. There is some mystery because the lockdown basically didn’t happen in the townships, because it is impossible to social distance/isolate or practice great hygiene in these densely populated, impoverished places. Yet still cases have crashed. Hence the herd immunity theory, tho it is just a theory, I admit
Similar things have happened in India. Which is even poorer, and more crowded. Cases have just fallen away (long before any vaccines arrived)
An interesting point well made, but.... India? Have you been to cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta?
I don’t see how you could possibly lockdown strictly in those enormous slums, and as for hygiene...
For comparison, America’s largest city in 1918 was nyc, with a population of 5m. Mumbai has a population of 18m
America’s 2nd largest city in 1918 was Chicago - 2.6m. New Delhi has a population of 16m
Yes, yes, but can they bat?
They can, but they use different bats.
More on topic, what's the governance structure of the Crown Office, is there any UK institution that can manage the problems without nuclear options such as the suspension of Holyrood?
Crown Office is under the control of the Lord Advocate. Before Holyrood this was basically a UK appointment and the Crown Office had a huge degree of independence arguably too much in that it was not accountable to anyone. Post devolution the Lord Advocate became a member of the Scottish government akin to the Attorney General in rUK. This has, to put it politely, proved suboptimal. In England, AIUI, prosecutions are a matter for the DPP who is not a government minister. This is clearly a good thing. The separation of powers is very important.
For years after devolution Crown Office clung to its independence but we are now seeing that crumble and what looks painfully like politically motivated prosecutions. I am not saying that Salmond was such but the way that the "evidence" was, err, collected caused considerable concern before the trial and during it. The current prosecutions for alleged breaches of the Contempt of Court Act directed at journalists seem ill advised too.
For decades most of the Advocates Depute who prosecuted crime in Scotland were senior silks looking to tick a public service box before going onto the bench. The downside was that these silks often had limited knowledge of criminal law but they were smart and absolutely independent, by no means dependent on their salaries which in most cases were a pittance to what they had earned before. The Crown Office is now more "professional" in that it has ADs who serve there for long periods of time and who don't have that independence. I am not completely convinced that the trade off has proven advantageous.
That cohort of the elderly are those who saw the benefit of vaccines saving their generation from polio and were aware of how it ended the worldwide scourge of smallpox. Vaccination for them was a wonderful thing.
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
'Odd' is putting it mildly. 'Ill-judged, gratuitously insulting, and counter-productive' would cover it better.
Yes, but sometimes being deliberately rude can be a strategy (not a very good one imo, but still). In this case I wasn't sure why Gove seemed to be going out to provoke an angry response.
The man so awful he was removed as a Chief Justice, twice, for judicial misconduct, and gifted a senate seat to the Democrats in Alabama?
An inspired choice for Republicans.
The very same.
Was a great political betting event.
Sell Boeing. Shelby was the driving force behind the Senate Launch System. Once he is gone, a lot of the blocks to ditching SLS go.
Ten minutes after the last one of Starship and New Glenn reach orbit, SLS is dead meat.
Conceivably if just Starship does.
SLS is basically dead now - they couldn't light their candle for more than a minute, as their competition keeps improving. Bet on SpaceX, despite Elon being a twat.
If history tells us anything - history isn't created by the anodyne people
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
It’s important to ask why the vaccine taskforce seems to have worked, while track and trace and Cummings’s moonshot both failed.
Because we have a large amount of domestic expertise in vaccines and pharmaceutical production, and appointed (whether by luck or judgment) someone who knew the industry extremely well, and was trained in picking potential winners from startup efforts.
'Mooshot' failed because government/NHS testing didn't seem to grasp what mass antigen testing could and couldn't be used for. And they only tried it out once on any scale, way too late in the day. If rapid testing had been chosen early on as the best way of controlling the spread of the virus, and sufficient resources committed early on, it might have worked.
Track & trace failed for numerous reasons. It's only feasible with a relatively low number of active infections, otherwise it becomes overwhelmed*. The system tested only symptomatic individuals - who would already have been infectious for days - and didn't return results for further days*. The percentage of 'contacts' contacted remained low throughout. The percentage of those contacted who then isolated (around 20%) was lower still.
Putting someone with no real public health background, or apparent scientific knowledge in charge of it clearly didn't help.
Predictably, the huge growth in the number of daily tests was hailed s a great achievement. Whether that was of any great benefit does not seem to have been thought about very much.
A hugely expensive waste of time.
(*Mass antigen testing avoids both of these problems.)
Not sure that is fair. the EU has screwed this one up. For me that is much less of an issue than the ridiculous charade of denial and recrimination against all and sundry. It has all been unedifying to witness and betrayed an element of insecurity about the organisation which quite surprised me.
I agree.
But the glee with which the Brexitards have leapt on this issue is nauseating.
Especially since Boris spent all of 2020 screwing up.
Not sure that is fair. the EU has screwed this one up. For me that is much less of an issue than the ridiculous charade of denial and recrimination against all and sundry. It has all been unedifying to witness and betrayed an element of insecurity about the organisation which quite surprised me.
I agree.
But the glee with which the Brexitards have leapt on this issue is nauseating.
Especially since Boris spent all of 2020 screwing up.
It was a lot more than pro Brexit supporters who attacked the insane decision by UVDL and others
Indeed it was across the political divide and the Irish government
And the conclusion, exactly what Cummings would have wanted:
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
It’s important to ask why the vaccine taskforce seems to have worked, while track and trace and Cummings’s moonshot both failed.
Except they didn't fail. Testing is at 800k per day now, and the Western world was quite open as to how far they'd allow tracking apps to take hold.
It has failed massively in its primary aim of limiting the pandemic.
On the subject of the EU, it is worth noting that CureVac is likely to be the first to market with a vaccine that is fully tweaked to deal with SA and Brazilian Covid.
The EU was first to buy CureVac (although we now have domestic manufacturing organised through GSK), but it's entirely possible there is another twist in the whole vaccine tale.
This doesn't seem quite right. In 1920 the population of Mexico City was 1 million (according to Wikipedia) and now it is 21 million. Are they saying total deaths or deaths per million? If the former I am surprised that it has taken this long being brutal.
Have to say I've found the England vaccination figures for Sunday disappointing. Should Scotland send in the army to help?
England vaccinated 0.1% less than Scotland - given Scotland has 5% to catch up, should we send more of the British Army to Scotland? Otherwise it will be nearly 2 months until it catches up....
Also, top notch understatement from the Warrington Guardian.
The Aryan race is linked to Nazi ideology.
The other thing is that the Tory candidate has a really Morris Danceresque poor grasp of history.
I'm not sure how Boris Johnson, with his Turkish ancestry, is keeping the Aryan race going?
Mind you I bet is like one of those EDL/William Blake belief that Saint George was English, And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green, And was the holy Lamb of God,
That cohort of the elderly are those who saw the benefit of vaccines saving their generation from polio and were aware of how it ended the worldwide scourge of smallpox. Vaccination for them was a wonderful thing.
On that general topic, the GP on BBC Breakfast this morning was talking about the hot topic of vaccine hesitancy in some BAME groups. She related her experience as being that older people from all communities were keen on the jab, but in some of them it was the younger relatives picking up conspiracy crap from WhatsApp and such like who were approaching them and trying to put them off.
Anti-social media is a scourge.
As to tonight's presser, I'm encouraged that Van-Tam thinks it likely that the SA variant isn't more transmissible than the Kent variant, which ought hopefully to mean it doesn't explode everywhere and cause serious damage. But I'm still just as worried that something even worse will get in from abroad and wreck everything, because the measures to keep new variants out are so half-baked.
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
I think you surmised it was written in order to justify an expected suspension of Article 16 by HMG.
My view FWIW is that the Brexit deal was known in advance by the UK government to be unworkable with regard to the island of Ireland. And this would be true of any deal within the various parties' red lines.
The actual intention, and the only one available to a UK Brexit government was to agree to something which contravened a UK red line, be terminologically inexactitudinous about its meaning and consequence....and wait.
That's exactly what they have done.
They are now in a position where RoI and the UK (and peace) have a common interest in something which breaches the EUs red lines.
For the island of Ireland to work when the UK has a hardish Brexit someone's red lines are going to go.
it's what Gove calls a political solution.
The outstanding Tony Connelly is very much on the ball. WHat I haven't noticed from him is how to square the circle.
The common interest of RoI and UK (which will never be acknowledged of course) against the interests of the EU, its other members and (to some extent) NI unionists will be interesting to watch as it plays out.
Can the UK detach RoI (without admitting anything) from the solidarity of the EU?
This doesn't seem quite right. In 1920 the population of Mexico City was 1 million (according to Wikipedia) and now it is 21 million. Are they saying total deaths or deaths per million? If the former I am surprised that it has taken this long being brutal.
Yes, it seems to be just total deaths.
Excess deaths in the worst wave of 1918 in DF were 47 per 10,000. In winter 2020-21 its 19 per 10,000
So on a per capita basis covid is about 2/5 as bad as Spanish flu, in the Mexican capital. Still a fairly notable stat given that Spanish flu killed 50-100m worldwide
This doesn't seem quite right. In 1920 the population of Mexico City was 1 million (according to Wikipedia) and now it is 21 million. Are they saying total deaths or deaths per million? If the former I am surprised that it has taken this long being brutal.
Yes, it seems to be just total deaths.
Excess deaths in the worst wave of 1918 in DF were 47 per 10,000. In winter 2020-21 its 19 per 10,000
So on a per capita basis covid is about 2/5 as bad as Spanish flu, in the Mexican capital. Still a fairly notable stat given that Spanish flu killed 50-100m worldwide
And, ah hem, was just a footnote in history until the recent pandemic.
Is it possible in this mess that there will be time for some self-reflection? The party which has dominated Scottish politics for the last 13 years has, throughout that time, been run by a feckin idiot. It really doesn't say much for the other Scottish parties that to date this had had no impact on the SNP's dominance.
Have to say I've found the England vaccination figures for Sunday disappointing. Should Scotland send in the army to help?
The numbers were low across the UK.
Given the probable 2 day delay, the numbers today are probably those for Saturday.
The Scotland number officially is up to 8:30am this morning. And last week only the figure reported on Monday had a big drop, so it's pretty certain it's primarily the Sunday number.
Similarly the NHS England report says "Only records with a vaccination date between 8th December 2020 and 7th February 2021 have been included", so it's probably mostly Sunday as well.
(The reporting might have s thepeeder up at some point though.)
mRNA was of course not the only major advancement in 2020 in improving our understanding of the world and ability to positively manipulate it.
Don’t forget Alphafold.
Then there’s GPT 3.
Further advancement in robotics by Boston Dynamics.
The first use of CRISPR to edit a gene in the body (blindness).
Tesla overtaking the combined market cap of the western oil majors, peak oil demand called by many and peak daily supply announced by Shell.
Tentative discovery of Phosphine on Venus, meaning...?
First high altitude test of Starship, laying the foundation for a new age of exploration.
The successful beta launch of the Starlink service, with ubiquitous internet now around the corner.
Large hadron collider finding exotic new four quark particle.
Fresh archeological evidence putting a nail in the coffin of the Clovis-First consensus model of human colonisation of the americas, pushing back the date by many millennia and the likely means of travel changing from land bridge to boat.
Meanwhile there was all the excitement with the NY Times expose on “UAPs”, Cmdr David Fravor’s tours of the media studios after the formal declassification of the USS Nimitz and USS Roosevelt videos, and the new congressional process to open the book on government materials concerning “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
It would be an interesting sweepstake to see which of all these events changes the advancement of human civilisation the most by 2100. Sometimes it pays to look through life’s telescope the wrong way and not get too bogged down in the here and now.
This doesn't seem quite right. In 1920 the population of Mexico City was 1 million (according to Wikipedia) and now it is 21 million. Are they saying total deaths or deaths per million? If the former I am surprised that it has taken this long being brutal.
Yes, it seems to be just total deaths.
Excess deaths in the worst wave of 1918 in DF were 47 per 10,000. In winter 2020-21 its 19 per 10,000
So on a per capita basis covid is about 2/5 as bad as Spanish flu, in the Mexican capital. Still a fairly notable stat given that Spanish flu killed 50-100m worldwide
Shit. The truly alarming thing there is what I feared most: past infection with ‘normal’ Covid provides no immunity against SA Covid. This bug is Satanic
If the Safferbug runs riot in the UK this spring we will be back to square one. They won’t be able to tweak any of the vaccines in time. People will catch it again who’ve already had it. People vaxxed with AZ will also get it. Hopefully they will only get mild/moderate cases, but we don’t know that yet, for sure.
I don’t want to come over all Black Rook but this is ominous. To me it suggests lockdown until Autumn. And yet I just don’t think the economy can hack that, or the nation’s mental health. So what gives?
It’s a setback, but you are probably going too far.
The sample size in the new study was small. Of 1749 participants, 42 got sick, of whom 19 had the vaccine and 23 had a placebo, producing an efficacy figure of just 22 per cent.
However, no one became severely ill or died.
That is partly because participants were young – average age 31 – but also because while the vaccine doesn’t appear to prompt a significant immune response in the form of antibodies specific to 501Y.V2, it does still boost a broader immune response in the form of T cells. That also appears to be true of reinfection.
So AstraZeneca believes its vaccine still offers protection against serious illness and death from the variant. The same, with respect to T-Cells, will likely be true of reinfection.
In any case, South Africa has shipments of the Pfizer, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines on order, and all appear to provide protection against the variant, including among over 65s.o.
Finally, if you want some good news from South Africa, look at their case numbers and mortality over the last six weeks. Dropping like a rock.
Yes, the drop in cases and deaths in SA is encouraging. No one seems entirely sure why. Herd immunity in townships has been posited. Tho I also note the SA health minister is warning of a third wave
There is no mystery about the falling case numbers in South Africa. They started a lockdown at the end of December, and surprise surprise, cases peaked around two weeks later.
You’re wrong, I believe. There is some mystery because the lockdown basically didn’t happen in the townships, because it is impossible to social distance/isolate or practice great hygiene in these densely populated, impoverished places. Yet still cases have crashed. Hence the herd immunity theory, tho it is just a theory, I admit
Similar things have happened in India. Which is even poorer, and more crowded. Cases have just fallen away (long before any vaccines arrived)
An interesting point well made, but.... India? Have you been to cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta?
I don’t see how you could possibly lockdown strictly in those enormous slums, and as for hygiene...
For comparison, America’s largest city in 1918 was nyc, with a population of 5m. Mumbai has a population of 18m
America’s 2nd largest city in 1918 was Chicago - 2.6m. New Delhi has a population of 16m
Yes, yes, but can they bat?
They can, but they use different bats.
More on topic, what's the governance structure of the Crown Office, is there any UK institution that can manage the problems without nuclear options such as the suspension of Holyrood?
Crown Office is under the control of the Lord Advocate. Before Holyrood this was basically a UK appointment and the Crown Office had a huge degree of independence arguably too much in that it was not accountable to anyone. Post devolution the Lord Advocate became a member of the Scottish government akin to the Attorney General in rUK. This has, to put it politely, proved suboptimal. In England, AIUI, prosecutions are a matter for the DPP who is not a government minister. This is clearly a good thing. The separation of powers is very important.
For years after devolution Crown Office clung to its independence but we are now seeing that crumble and what looks painfully like politically motivated prosecutions. I am not saying that Salmond was such but the way that the "evidence" was, err, collected caused considerable concern before the trial and during it. The current prosecutions for alleged breaches of the Contempt of Court Act directed at journalists seem ill advised too.
For decades most of the Advocates Depute who prosecuted crime in Scotland were senior silks looking to tick a public service box before going onto the bench. The downside was that these silks often had limited knowledge of criminal law but they were smart and absolutely independent, by no means dependent on their salaries which in most cases were a pittance to what they had earned before. The Crown Office is now more "professional" in that it has ADs who serve there for long periods of time and who don't have that independence. I am not completely convinced that the trade off has proven advantageous.
Nicely phrased.
BTW, just in case it has escaped noticed, Salmond not turning up to inquiry tomorrow.
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
I think you surmised it was written in order to justify an expected suspension of Article 16 by HMG.
My view FWIW is that the Brexit deal was known in advance by the UK government to be unworkable with regard to the island of Ireland. And this would be true of any deal within the various parties' red lines.
The actual intention, and the only one available to a UK Brexit government was to agree to something which contravened a UK red line, be terminologically inexactitudinous about its meaning and consequence....and wait.
That's exactly what they have done.
They are now in a position where RoI and the UK (and peace) have a common interest in something which breaches the EUs red lines.
For the island of Ireland to work when the UK has a hardish Brexit someone's red lines are going to go.
it's what Gove calls a political solution.
The outstanding Tony Connelly is very much on the ball. WHat I haven't noticed from him is how to square the circle.
The common interest of RoI and UK (which will never be acknowledged of course) against the interests of the EU, its other members and (to some extent) NI unionists will be interesting to watch as it plays out.
Can the UK detach RoI (without admitting anything) from the solidarity of the EU?
The game's afoot.
I fear that UVDL has created a very serious situation that can only be resolved first and foremost between the UK and Irish governments, with lots of common sense and give and take, otherwise there is a real possibility of unrest and increased intimidation of border force personnel
Excellent and uplifting thread header, Robert; thank you.
Also has possibly the best pb analogy ever too!
Nope, yesterday saw the best ever PB analogy.
Much like getting your girlfriend pregnant on a pull out sofa there’s a deep sense of irony that the Conservative & Unionist Party, aided and abetted by the DUP, have via Brexit done more to weaken Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom than the IRA.
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
I think you surmised it was written in order to justify an expected suspension of Article 16 by HMG.
My view FWIW is that the Brexit deal was known in advance by the UK government to be unworkable with regard to the island of Ireland. And this would be true of any deal within the various parties' red lines.
The actual intention, and the only one available to a UK Brexit government was to agree to something which contravened a UK red line, be terminologically inexactitudinous about its meaning and consequence....and wait.
That's exactly what they have done.
They are now in a position where RoI and the UK (and peace) have a common interest in something which breaches the EUs red lines.
For the island of Ireland to work when the UK has a hardish Brexit someone's red lines are going to go.
it's what Gove calls a political solution.
The outstanding Tony Connelly is very much on the ball. WHat I haven't noticed from him is how to square the circle.
The common interest of RoI and UK (which will never be acknowledged of course) against the interests of the EU, its other members and (to some extent) NI unionists will be interesting to watch as it plays out.
Can the UK detach RoI (without admitting anything) from the solidarity of the EU?
The game's afoot.
I think you may be right.
Moreover, the EU is a fantastic whipping boy to maintain native Brexit enthusiasm for a while yet.
It would be interesting to see concrete data on the economic hit of Brexit red-tape. So far much of it is still in the realm of anecdote.
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
'Odd' is putting it mildly. 'Ill-judged, gratuitously insulting, and counter-productive' would cover it better.
Just when the government had seized the moral high ground - and were being praised for it from all quarters - for their diplomacy, constructiveness and restraint, Govey has to behave like a political bovver boy. Shame, because I thought the initial approach would have stood us in good stead for future EU negotiations.
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
I think you surmised it was written in order to justify an expected suspension of Article 16 by HMG.
My view FWIW is that the Brexit deal was known in advance by the UK government to be unworkable with regard to the island of Ireland. And this would be true of any deal within the various parties' red lines.
The actual intention, and the only one available to a UK Brexit government was to agree to something which contravened a UK red line, be terminologically inexactitudinous about its meaning and consequence....and wait.
That's exactly what they have done.
They are now in a position where RoI and the UK (and peace) have a common interest in something which breaches the EUs red lines.
For the island of Ireland to work when the UK has a hardish Brexit someone's red lines are going to go.
it's what Gove calls a political solution.
The outstanding Tony Connelly is very much on the ball. WHat I haven't noticed from him is how to square the circle.
The common interest of RoI and UK (which will never be acknowledged of course) against the interests of the EU, its other members and (to some extent) NI unionists will be interesting to watch as it plays out.
Can the UK detach RoI (without admitting anything) from the solidarity of the EU?
The game's afoot.
Out of interest - at what point does it become detrimental for Ireland to be a part of the EU single market at the expense of access to the UK one?
(I’m not suggesting either happens - just curious about how how important both markets are)
I didn't understand the tone of the letter either. It was very odd.
'Odd' is putting it mildly. 'Ill-judged, gratuitously insulting, and counter-productive' would cover it better.
Just when the government had seized the moral high ground - and were being praised for it from all quarters - for their diplomacy, constructiveness and restraint, Govey has to behave like a political bovver boy. Shame, because I thought the initial approach would have stood us in good stead for future EU negotiations.
That's presumably what the move was about - taking advantage of having had the moral high ground to launch a counter at the right moment. He may simply have overshot.
Comments
Ten minutes after the last one of Starship and New Glenn reach orbit, SLS is dead meat.
Conceivably if just Starship does.
This has to be enormously positive for medium term capacity.
"But in terms of how things operated, the Vaccine Taskforce is being seen inside government as exemplary. ‘It makes us ask: is it possible to get things done at this speed and with this competence outside of a pandemic?’ says one minister. An unpublished Treasury report on the process is understood to describe it as a blueprint for an industrial strategy in the future
The EU must fail.
https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1358792021314576384
Republicans:
Robert Aderholt, incumbent U.S. Representative for Alabama's 4th congressional district
Will Ainsworth, Lieutenant Governor of Alabama
Katie Britt, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Richard Shelby
Mo Brooks, incumbent U.S. Representative for Alabama's 5th congressional district
Bradley Byrne, former U.S. representative for Alabama's 1st congressional district and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020
John Merrill, Alabama Secretary of State and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2020
Gary Palmer, incumbent U.S. Representative for Alabama's 6th congressional district
Democrats
Anthony Daniels, Minority Leader of the Alabama House of Representatives
Christopher England, state representative and chair of the Alabama Democratic Party
OF course this is still early days!
Would you mind coming out with something implausible or extreme so I can go back to my normal position? I'd appreciate it.
Perhaps they should have gone with 'meliora sequor', inverting the excuse for criminality which Ovid gives Medea: video meliora proboque | deteriora sequor.
(Hopefully they - and GSK - are already ramping up production on the assumption that results will be good.)
The problem is the issues we identified with the EU: it's sclerosis, it's lack of accountability, it's lack of democratic feedback, it's slow nature etc etc etc are all coming to the fore here.
Just because we identified the problems doesn't mean we want those problems to be there.
https://twitter.com/covidserology/status/1358823769096159235?s=21
Time now to open up Group 5.
(Disclaimer: I have an interest in this...).
For years after devolution Crown Office clung to its independence but we are now seeing that crumble and what looks painfully like politically motivated prosecutions. I am not saying that Salmond was such but the way that the "evidence" was, err, collected caused considerable concern before the trial and during it. The current prosecutions for alleged breaches of the Contempt of Court Act directed at journalists seem ill advised too.
For decades most of the Advocates Depute who prosecuted crime in Scotland were senior silks looking to tick a public service box before going onto the bench. The downside was that these silks often had limited knowledge of criminal law but they were smart and absolutely independent, by no means dependent on their salaries which in most cases were a pittance to what they had earned before. The Crown Office is now more "professional" in that it has ADs who serve there for long periods of time and who don't have that independence. I am not completely convinced that the trade off has proven advantageous.
Also, top notch understatement from the Warrington Guardian.
The Aryan race is linked to Nazi ideology.
Also has possibly the best pb analogy ever too!
'Mooshot' failed because government/NHS testing didn't seem to grasp what mass antigen testing could and couldn't be used for. And they only tried it out once on any scale, way too late in the day.
If rapid testing had been chosen early on as the best way of controlling the spread of the virus, and sufficient resources committed early on, it might have worked.
Track & trace failed for numerous reasons.
It's only feasible with a relatively low number of active infections, otherwise it becomes overwhelmed*.
The system tested only symptomatic individuals - who would already have been infectious for days - and didn't return results for further days*.
The percentage of 'contacts' contacted remained low throughout.
The percentage of those contacted who then isolated (around 20%) was lower still.
Putting someone with no real public health background, or apparent scientific knowledge in charge of it clearly didn't help.
Predictably, the huge growth in the number of daily tests was hailed s a great achievement. Whether that was of any great benefit does not seem to have been thought about very much.
A hugely expensive waste of time.
(*Mass antigen testing avoids both of these problems.)
But the glee with which the Brexitards have leapt on this issue is nauseating.
Especially since Boris spent all of 2020 screwing up.
Indeed it was across the political divide and the Irish government
The EU was first to buy CureVac (although we now have domestic manufacturing organised through GSK), but it's entirely possible there is another twist in the whole vaccine tale.
And actually, reading A16, I think HMG would be within their rights.
We will look over the fact that the deal was obviously flawed to begin with.
I wonder how that Financial Services equivalence deal is going.
Given the probable 2 day delay, the numbers today are probably those for Saturday.
I'm not sure how Boris Johnson, with his Turkish ancestry, is keeping the Aryan race going?
Mind you I bet is like one of those EDL/William Blake belief that Saint George was English, And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England's mountains green, And was the holy Lamb of God,
Anti-social media is a scourge.
As to tonight's presser, I'm encouraged that Van-Tam thinks it likely that the SA variant isn't more transmissible than the Kent variant, which ought hopefully to mean it doesn't explode everywhere and cause serious damage. But I'm still just as worried that something even worse will get in from abroad and wreck everything, because the measures to keep new variants out are so half-baked.
But we know we bankers are ranked lower than fish.
(I cruise because I am old!)
The actual intention, and the only one available to a UK Brexit government was to agree to something which contravened a UK red line, be terminologically inexactitudinous about its meaning and consequence....and wait.
That's exactly what they have done.
They are now in a position where RoI and the UK (and peace) have a common interest in something which breaches the EUs red lines.
For the island of Ireland to work when the UK has a hardish Brexit someone's red lines are going to go.
it's what Gove calls a political solution.
The outstanding Tony Connelly is very much on the ball. WHat I haven't noticed from him is how to square the circle.
The common interest of RoI and UK (which will never be acknowledged of course) against the interests of the EU, its other members and (to some extent) NI unionists will be interesting to watch as it plays out.
Can the UK detach RoI (without admitting anything) from the solidarity of the EU?
The game's afoot.
Excess deaths in the worst wave of 1918 in DF were 47 per 10,000. In winter 2020-21 its 19 per 10,000
So on a per capita basis covid is about 2/5 as bad as Spanish flu, in the Mexican capital. Still a fairly notable stat given that Spanish flu killed 50-100m worldwide
8th of December 202? The SNP really have been in power too long.
Proving my point.
Similarly the NHS England report says "Only records with a vaccination date between 8th December 2020 and 7th February 2021 have been included", so it's probably mostly Sunday as well.
(The reporting might have s thepeeder up at some point though.)
mRNA was of course not the only major advancement in 2020 in improving our understanding of the world and ability to positively manipulate it.
Don’t forget Alphafold.
Then there’s GPT 3.
Further advancement in robotics by Boston Dynamics.
The first use of CRISPR to edit a gene in the body (blindness).
Tesla overtaking the combined market cap of the western oil majors, peak oil demand called by many and peak daily supply announced by Shell.
Tentative discovery of Phosphine on Venus, meaning...?
First high altitude test of Starship, laying the foundation for a new age of exploration.
The successful beta launch of the Starlink service, with ubiquitous internet now around the corner.
Large hadron collider finding exotic new four quark particle.
Fresh archeological evidence putting a nail in the coffin of the Clovis-First consensus model of human colonisation of the americas, pushing back the date by many millennia and the likely means of travel changing from land bridge to boat.
Meanwhile there was all the excitement with the NY Times expose on “UAPs”, Cmdr David Fravor’s tours of the media studios after the formal declassification of the USS Nimitz and USS Roosevelt videos, and the new congressional process to open the book on government materials concerning “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
It would be an interesting sweepstake to see which of all these events changes the advancement of human civilisation the most by 2100. Sometimes it pays to look through life’s telescope the wrong way and not get too bogged down in the here and now.
My first trip to Australia, the first thing I did was flush the toilet to see the toilet to see if it really did flush the other way.
BTW, just in case it has escaped noticed, Salmond not turning up to inquiry tomorrow.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/alex-salmond-evidence-session-holyrood-23460844
What kind of inquiry can it be when the principal witness can simply opt out?
Much like getting your girlfriend pregnant on a pull out sofa there’s a deep sense of irony that the Conservative & Unionist Party, aided and abetted by the DUP, have via Brexit done more to weaken Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom than the IRA.
https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1358835912348680193
Moreover, the EU is a fantastic whipping boy to maintain native Brexit enthusiasm for a while yet.
It would be interesting to see concrete data on the economic hit of Brexit red-tape. So far much of it is still in the realm of anecdote.
(I’m not suggesting either happens - just curious about how how important both markets are)