Hmm, the media seem to be getting a bit ahead of the actualité in reporting the Scottish vaccine-study figures. The 94% AZ figure applies only to days 28 to 34; there's no data on whether protection falls off after that. For Pfizer, the reported 85% also applies to days 28 to 34 but seems to fall off after that. In all cases, though, the error bars are quite big. These are encouraging but very preliminary results and are not sufficient to say one vaccine is better than the other; they also tend to suggest that the second Pfizer dose within 28 days is needed for good protection, although again more data needed.
What I think one can say with confidence from the study is that the AZ jab is very good, and we already know for Israel that the Pfizer one also is (albeit with two doses).
Given that the data was apparently collected between 8 December and 15 February, there is a rather simple explanation for why we don't have data for longer periods....
They state in the story that there is a pre-print paper on SSRN - can't seem to find it...
I hope those "up to"s are not the upper 95% CI. Otherwise AZN can get higher than Pfizer by e.g. having a much smaller sample size. Like you, I'd love to see the pre-print (as discussed the other day, why can't they link to it or at least give enough info to easily find it?)
As part of the EAVE II project, which uses patient data to track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time, researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Aberdeen, Glasgow and St Andrew’s and Public Health Scotland (PHS) analysed a dataset covering the entire Scottish population of 5.4 million.
crosses fingers....
Still can't find the pre-print though (not that I've tried that hard). "Up to" always worries me, in any sense. If they're using the point estimates, it shouldn't be "up to" either. Hmm, have to just wait and see for the preprint, I guess.
I can't imagine a study, no matter how large, that had *no* error bars in the data.
Yep, but "up to" is just wrong either way. If it's the point estimate then "up to" is no more correct than "down to". It implies the point estimate is the upper limit, which it isn't, it's just the point estimate. I don't really have a problem with the lay press just using the point estimate - 80% effective (or whatever) or using a range (70-90% effective, for example). But if its 80% (95%CI 70-90%) then it's not "up to 80% effective" it is, at best estimate, "80% effective or 70-90% effective).
All that reminds me of Gordon Brown over the Global Economic Crisis.
Brown's failings were before the financial crisis.
Johnson wasn't even PM a year before this. Between vaccines and genomic sequencing he's ensured we are well placed to come out of it first though.
Hmmm, I’m not sure which claim is sillier the idea that he had no influence on policy before he became PM or the idea that he was personally involved in vaccines or genomic sequencing.
You think Boris had nothing to do with the decision to set up and pay for COGUK?
You think Boris had nothing to do with setting up and paying for the vaccine taskforce?
You think Boris had nothing to do with the decision to reject opposition advice about joining the EU scheme instead?
The Kumbaya boys are back! ....Felix....Sandpit.....
Given how many pbers regard the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands as excusable and something to be discreetly forgotten as quickly as possible, to the point of snarling viciously at anyone who has the effrontery to mention it, you’re not likely to find a balanced assessment of the government’s role from the site’s government supporters.
Ok, but do you have any evidence to the contrary from the electorate at large on this?
Because what we keep hearing from the LOTO's office is that voters are inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, and don't like it when they're attacked over the pandemic.
What we’ve learned in the last year is that there is a substantial cohort of voters (well-represented on pb) for whom anything this government does, up to and including negligently killing tens of thousands, is excusable. Can you imagine how they would have reacted if Jeremy Corbyn had presided over the shambles we’ve seen this last year?
This is of course utterly contemptible, but there are betting implications to be drawn from this level of loyalty.
Alastair, I completely agree that the government's performance has been woeful.
But, if you think our government is responsible for killing tens of thousands, presumably you think the same (if not worse) of the leaders in Europe who have pro-actively destroyed the reputation of a vaccine to the point that the people don't want it. I mean, that is fucking special.
Our government ordered the NHS to send elderly patients back into care homes. A direct instruction - https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-care-homes-discharge/ Which directly killed tens of thousands. If the government wasn't responsible for the absolutely avoidable slaughter in care homes then who was?
I don't disagree. Perhaps there will be prosecutions when this is all over.
If you agree, why did you call out the idea that the government is responsible for killing tens of thousands? I don't care what they do in Europe, that's not our responsibility. Nor is it an either/or - BOTH things can be true.
As I keep pointing out, the roll-out of the vaccine has been a massive success. That in no way negates the general chaos and mass slaughter before it - we could have done things responsibly for a year and THEN had a massive success with vaccination. It isn't an either/or...
I was just curious as to what Alastair thought about other governments. What happened with care homes was bad, but one could argue the governments of the UK were faced with no good options.
Actively undermining a vaccine. Well, that's another level of badness.
Its whataboutery. Yes this is shit, but whatabout that? "What happened with care homes was bad". Bad = 20k dead who should still be alive. Its not bad, its bloody criminal. And you lot don't give a toss because Back Boris.
XXXX off you XXXX. I do care. I also care about intent. The governments of the UK did not mean to kill those people.
The governments of Europe are very much happy to kill their people to cover for their own incompetence.
Can you see the logic fail? You think it impossible that one govt would mean to kill its own population, but think it meanwhile entirely likely, certain even, that another govt would.
The Russians.
The Russians have claimed their death toll is minimal and the virus is undercontrol. Meanwhile their excess deaths are over a quarter of a million and counting by November alone. They supposedly have a great vaccine but are only giving it to VIPs and not their vulnerable population it seems.
Whether Putin sees the virus as a way of cleansing his demographics saving on pension support etc - or if he just has a callous indifference to whether the elderly peasants in his nation die so long as he's safe, its clear they're not trying to halt the spread in the same way we are.
Interesting. You are to date the only person who has given me information about this and if you are right then it is shocking. For all its deficits, are we really saying that the EU is acting in the same way? @tlg86 seems to think so.
Politicians in Europe, including President Macron in France, have cast doubt on the efficacy of the AZ vaccine. This has undoubtedly contributed to people in Europe not wanting it. Are they as bad as Putin? Probably not, but they are certainly worse than our, still very incompetent, politicians.
Do you not think they had (their own/their scientific establishment's) valid reasons for casting doubt?
There's a lot the EU and European nations got wrong. Some of it fog of war, some of it making different judgements because their social controls were generally working better than the UK's. Some of it serious errors that people should (but won't) be held accountable for.
But AZ did do an absurdly bad job of providing data to confirm the effectiveness of their vaccine. And Euroboffins saying "we need more certainty than this" was reasoned and responsible. Just wrong.
"Absurdly bad" citation please. The trial was messy, but to characterise it as absurdly bad is ridiculous. It got authorisation from the MHRA, EMA and WHO for all ages and the FDA is likely to give it full authorisation as well. European politicians and their surrogates have made huge errors with it and now the people will pay the price.
They were asked "how well does this work with over 65's", weren't they? Their answer was "somewhere between perfectly and it makes people sicker". The range bars were huge, because their study was hopelessly underpowered.
From the Pascal Soriot interview; “The issue with the elderly data is not so much whether it works or not. It´s that we have today a limited amount of data in the older population...There's no enough vaccines for everybody. So if they want to use another vaccine for older people and our vaccine for younger people, what´s the problem? It’s not a problem."
That's what several countries are doing. Use AZ for (f'example) health workers, other vaccines (where the data are more reliable) with the elderly. It's only a problem when people project other issues onto the vaccine one.
And before anyone, anyone, dares to point fingers at the tragic cost in lives, remember the story so far.
And yet the MHRA, EMA and WHO approved it for all ages. So that's just bullshit really isn't it. The EU's own regulator has given it full approval and it's the politicians that have undermined it. The politicians you seem to be defending because your love of the EU has blinded you to just how many are going to die because of their words and actions that have led to people rejecting a vaccine that is highly effective.
Precisely.
Had the EMA said no that would have been fair enough. They didn't.
Instead the undermining came from the same people who were desperately trying to get their hands on it days earlier.
All that reminds me of Gordon Brown over the Global Economic Crisis.
Brown's failings were before the financial crisis.
Johnson wasn't even PM a year before this. Between vaccines and genomic sequencing he's ensured we are well placed to come out of it first though.
Hmmm, I’m not sure which claim is sillier the idea that he had no influence on policy before he became PM or the idea that he was personally involved in vaccines or genomic sequencing.
You think Boris had nothing to do with the decision to set up and pay for COGUK?
You think Boris had nothing to do with setting up and paying for the vaccine taskforce?
You think Boris had nothing to do with the decision to reject opposition advice about joining the EU scheme instead?
The Kumbaya boys are back! ....Felix....Sandpit.....
Given how many pbers regard the avoidable deaths of tens of thousands as excusable and something to be discreetly forgotten as quickly as possible, to the point of snarling viciously at anyone who has the effrontery to mention it, you’re not likely to find a balanced assessment of the government’s role from the site’s government supporters.
Ok, but do you have any evidence to the contrary from the electorate at large on this?
Because what we keep hearing from the LOTO's office is that voters are inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, and don't like it when they're attacked over the pandemic.
What we’ve learned in the last year is that there is a substantial cohort of voters (well-represented on pb) for whom anything this government does, up to and including negligently killing tens of thousands, is excusable. Can you imagine how they would have reacted if Jeremy Corbyn had presided over the shambles we’ve seen this last year?
This is of course utterly contemptible, but there are betting implications to be drawn from this level of loyalty.
Alastair, I completely agree that the government's performance has been woeful.
But, if you think our government is responsible for killing tens of thousands, presumably you think the same (if not worse) of the leaders in Europe who have pro-actively destroyed the reputation of a vaccine to the point that the people don't want it. I mean, that is fucking special.
Our government ordered the NHS to send elderly patients back into care homes. A direct instruction - https://fullfact.org/health/coronavirus-care-homes-discharge/ Which directly killed tens of thousands. If the government wasn't responsible for the absolutely avoidable slaughter in care homes then who was?
I don't disagree. Perhaps there will be prosecutions when this is all over.
If you agree, why did you call out the idea that the government is responsible for killing tens of thousands? I don't care what they do in Europe, that's not our responsibility. Nor is it an either/or - BOTH things can be true.
As I keep pointing out, the roll-out of the vaccine has been a massive success. That in no way negates the general chaos and mass slaughter before it - we could have done things responsibly for a year and THEN had a massive success with vaccination. It isn't an either/or...
I was just curious as to what Alastair thought about other governments. What happened with care homes was bad, but one could argue the governments of the UK were faced with no good options.
Actively undermining a vaccine. Well, that's another level of badness.
Its whataboutery. Yes this is shit, but whatabout that? "What happened with care homes was bad". Bad = 20k dead who should still be alive. Its not bad, its bloody criminal. And you lot don't give a toss because Back Boris.
XXXX off you XXXX. I do care. I also care about intent. The governments of the UK did not mean to kill those people.
The governments of Europe are very much happy to kill their people to cover for their own incompetence.
Can you see the logic fail? You think it impossible that one govt would mean to kill its own population, but think it meanwhile entirely likely, certain even, that another govt would.
The Russians.
The Russians have claimed their death toll is minimal and the virus is undercontrol. Meanwhile their excess deaths are over a quarter of a million and counting by November alone. They supposedly have a great vaccine but are only giving it to VIPs and not their vulnerable population it seems.
Whether Putin sees the virus as a way of cleansing his demographics saving on pension support etc - or if he just has a callous indifference to whether the elderly peasants in his nation die so long as he's safe, its clear they're not trying to halt the spread in the same way we are.
Interesting. You are to date the only person who has given me information about this and if you are right then it is shocking. For all its deficits, are we really saying that the EU is acting in the same way? @tlg86 seems to think so.
Politicians in Europe, including President Macron in France, have cast doubt on the efficacy of the AZ vaccine. This has undoubtedly contributed to people in Europe not wanting it. Are they as bad as Putin? Probably not, but they are certainly worse than our, still very incompetent, politicians.
Do you not think they had (their own/their scientific establishment's) valid reasons for casting doubt?
There's a lot the EU and European nations got wrong. Some of it fog of war, some of it making different judgements because their social controls were generally working better than the UK's. Some of it serious errors that people should (but won't) be held accountable for.
But AZ did do an absurdly bad job of providing data to confirm the effectiveness of their vaccine. And Euroboffins saying "we need more certainty than this" was reasoned and responsible. Just wrong.
"Absurdly bad" citation please. The trial was messy, but to characterise it as absurdly bad is ridiculous. It got authorisation from the MHRA, EMA and WHO for all ages and the FDA is likely to give it full authorisation as well. European politicians and their surrogates have made huge errors with it and now the people will pay the price.
They were asked "how well does this work with over 65's", weren't they? Their answer was "somewhere between perfectly and it makes people sicker". The range bars were huge, because their study was hopelessly underpowered.
From the Pascal Soriot interview; “The issue with the elderly data is not so much whether it works or not. It´s that we have today a limited amount of data in the older population...There's no enough vaccines for everybody. So if they want to use another vaccine for older people and our vaccine for younger people, what´s the problem? It’s not a problem."
That's what several countries are doing. Use AZ for (f'example) health workers, other vaccines (where the data are more reliable) with the elderly. It's only a problem when people project other issues onto the vaccine one.
And before anyone, anyone, dares to point fingers at the tragic cost in lives, remember the story so far.
And yet the MHRA, EMA and WHO approved it for all ages. So that's just bullshit really isn't it. The EU's own regulator has given it full approval and it's the politicians that have undermined it. The politicians you seem to be defending because your love of the EU has blinded you to just how many are going to die because of their words and actions that have led to people rejecting a vaccine that is highly effective.
The AZ Phase III trial had problems with dosing variations and under recruitment of older trial subjects.
Both of these issues seem to have arisen because of the relative inexperience of Oxford University and AZ in vaccine development / manufacture.
I don't think there is any dispute that Moderna and Pfizer ran better trials - remember AZ still hasn't been licensed in the US, so the problem is not just to do with the EU being nasty.
AZ and Oxford however deserve lots of praise for the pricing of their vaccine however.
Is there any particular reason this is regarded as such a bad idea? I mean we have a tunnel from England to France...
I think it's a super idea myself, though this is the first time I've seen the Manx Interchange plan. Seems a bit of a weird one, as you have to go well out of your way to get from Scotland to NI and vice versa (though I assume it must still be quicker than the ferry).
Tunnelling is a lot cheaper than it used to be.
One big problem might be solved if there was a requirement for all vehicles entering the tunnel to be electric, although fires would still be an issue. The Mont Blanc fire is not something anyone would want to repeat.
AZ highly effective, and as good as Pfizer? Suck it Macron and the German gutter press.
A characteristically cerebral comment.
It's often more important to be correct than cerebral.
Call me crazy, but when asked about the efficacy of vaccines, all politicians in all countries should point to a senior medical person and say - "Ask him/her about the published, peer reviewed science".
Hmm, the media seem to be getting a bit ahead of the actualité in reporting the Scottish vaccine-study figures. The 94% AZ figure applies only to days 28 to 34; there's no data on whether protection falls off after that. For Pfizer, the reported 85% also applies to days 28 to 34 but seems to fall off after that. In all cases, though, the error bars are quite big. These are encouraging but very preliminary results and are not sufficient to say one vaccine is better than the other; they also tend to suggest that the second Pfizer dose within 28 days is needed for good protection, although again more data needed.
What I think one can say with confidence from the study is that the AZ jab is very good, and we already know for Israel that the Pfizer one also is (albeit with two doses).
Given that the data was apparently collected between 8 December and 15 February, there is a rather simple explanation for why we don't have data for longer periods....
Indeed, but they do for Pfizer.
I think the early pfizers would have had a 3 week booster, so interesting, but not comparable.
The question to ask the DUP never changes: We know what you don't want. What do you want? It is a question they will never answer and whole political careers have been built on it. It is time to call their bluff.
I still don't really understand the logic of keeping "non-essential" retail closed. Like why is it less risky to go down a cramped Tesco aisle compared to a cramped H&M aisle? Both sell clothes, just one also sells food.
It is a nonsense.
Didn't someone from SAGE even say that closing/opening NE retail has an almost zero effect on case numbers....?
Hmm, the media seem to be getting a bit ahead of the actualité in reporting the Scottish vaccine-study figures. The 94% AZ figure applies only to days 28 to 34; there's no data on whether protection falls off after that. For Pfizer, the reported 85% also applies to days 28 to 34 but seems to fall off after that. In all cases, though, the error bars are quite big. These are encouraging but very preliminary results and are not sufficient to say one vaccine is better than the other; they also tend to suggest that the second Pfizer dose within 28 days is needed for good protection, although again more data needed.
What I think one can say with confidence from the study is that the AZ jab is very good, and we already know for Israel that the Pfizer one also is (albeit with two doses).
Given that the data was apparently collected between 8 December and 15 February, there is a rather simple explanation for why we don't have data for longer periods....
Indeed, but they do for Pfizer.
I think the early pfizers would have had a 3 week booster, so interesting, but not comparable.
Good point. It's certainly something which needs to be taken into account. If there were many two-dose subjects in the study, then from the Israeli results we might have expected better figures for Pfizer (although the error bars are large).
So long as it has something stamped in the windscreen, and export paperwork from the origin country, I reckon I could get plates for it out here. They have full light clusters and a speedo, would just need some tyres and be good to go!
You're supposed to be able to get Saudi plates on just about fucking anything with the right contacts. Somebody did Gumball right across Europe in a Lambo powered Dark Knight era Batmobile replica by this artifice.
They state in the story that there is a pre-print paper on SSRN - can't seem to find it...
I hope those "up to"s are not the upper 95% CI. Otherwise AZN can get higher than Pfizer by e.g. having a much smaller sample size. Like you, I'd love to see the pre-print (as discussed the other day, why can't they link to it or at least give enough info to easily find it?)
As part of the EAVE II project, which uses patient data to track the pandemic and the vaccine roll out in real time, researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Aberdeen, Glasgow and St Andrew’s and Public Health Scotland (PHS) analysed a dataset covering the entire Scottish population of 5.4 million.
crosses fingers....
Still can't find the pre-print though (not that I've tried that hard). "Up to" always worries me, in any sense. If they're using the point estimates, it shouldn't be "up to" either. Hmm, have to just wait and see for the preprint, I guess.
I can't imagine a study, no matter how large, that had *no* error bars in the data.
Yep, but "up to" is just wrong either way. If it's the point estimate then "up to" is no more correct than "down to". It implies the point estimate is the upper limit, which it isn't, it's just the point estimate. I don't really have a problem with the lay press just using the point estimate - 80% effective (or whatever) or using a range (70-90% effective, for example). But if its 80% (95%CI 70-90%) then it's not "up to 80% effective" it is, at best estimate, "80% effective or 70-90% effective).
The 95% CI for the 94% number is 73 to 99, and is based on two events.
It's a bit hard to make sense of without the full paper, but a 6 week efficacy of around 60% is about what was predicted.
Yep, it'll be good to see the whole thing. Efficacy estimates appear to come from the propensity adjusted figures, so it will be interesting to see what's in the propensity model and the detail they have on that. And whether it differs to the model used in for the English data, assuming they take a similar approach.
(For those not into this kind of analysis, this is not a randomised trial, so comparisons have to take into account other risk factors - age, obviously, but also e.g. regional differences in infections which might matter if there are regional differences in vaccinations. There are many ways of doing that, depending partly on the data available on those other risk factors)
Hmm, the media seem to be getting a bit ahead of the actualité in reporting the Scottish vaccine-study figures. The 94% AZ figure applies only to days 28 to 34; there's no data on whether protection falls off after that. For Pfizer, the reported 85% also applies to days 28 to 34 but seems to fall off after that. In all cases, though, the error bars are quite big. These are encouraging but very preliminary results and are not sufficient to say one vaccine is better than the other; they also tend to suggest that the second Pfizer dose within 28 days is needed for good protection, although again more data needed.
What I think one can say with confidence from the study is that the AZ jab is very good, and we already know for Israel that the Pfizer one also is (albeit with two doses).
Given that the data was apparently collected between 8 December and 15 February, there is a rather simple explanation for why we don't have data for longer periods....
Indeed, but they do for Pfizer.
I think the early pfizers would have had a 3 week booster, so interesting, but not comparable.
I don't think that's the case in Scotland only around 5k second doses were given up to that point.
Being poor, stressed & unemployed is not good for one's health either.
Something that many on PB simply wouldn't have a clue about.
Is the NHS going to be overwhelmed? No? Then open up more.
Although we are now as a matter of weeks away I see, as you do, no great harm in waiting, having come this far. But with that comes the danger that, like the pot of gold, it is always just out of reach.
I have been saying, literally, will no one think of the children, from an intellectual rather than emotional perspective, such as I possess one of the former. I gave the example of a six-yr old in July who, if they persist, will have been living with restrictions for 25% of their lives. That is shocking in concept enough.
But what really hit home was @Isam's post saying his 15-month old hadn't had any social contact with anyone outside their family. Quite extraordinary.
Sorry if I misled, he did go to baby massage classes and see some other children pre lockdown, although he was only four months then, and in the late summer we had a weekend away with friends their kids, in Hampshire. He loved it! But probably only about four or five interactions with other kids since last March and none since November.
It's not just in the EU, in Australia there have been complaints about the plan to use the AZ vaccine because of the crap spread about AZ by European politicians.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
It's not just in the EU, in Australia there have been complaints about the plan to use the AZ vaccine because of the crap spread about AZ by European politicians.
Soft headed by the Australians in that case. Hopefully today's data release will help to undo a lot of that damage from Macron and others in Europe.
For those outside the paywall, the argument is that we won't get back to the old economy - not that we won't get back to the old life. It's the old saws about wfh becoming increasingly important and all that that implies. To which I'd reply, well, probably. But that was going to happen anyway. And the extent to which it does happen is unclear. Meanwhile, the consensus of planning and investment decisions in Manchester still seems to be expecting to need more office space. I think this is based on increase in jobs outweighing the shift to wfh. But really, there's a lot of guesswork associated with these predictions.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
For those outside the paywall, the argument is that we won't get back to the old economy - not that we won't get back to the old life. It's the old saws about wfh becoming increasingly important and all that that implies. To which I'd reply, well, probably. But that was going to happen anyway. And the extent to which it does happen is unclear. Meanwhile, the consensus of planning and investment decisions in Manchester still seems to be expecting to need more office space. I think this is based on increase in jobs outweighing the shift to wfh. But really, there's a lot of guesswork associated with these predictions.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Being poor, stressed & unemployed is not good for one's health either.
Something that many on PB simply wouldn't have a clue about.
Is the NHS going to be overwhelmed? No? Then open up more.
Although we are now as a matter of weeks away I see, as you do, no great harm in waiting, having come this far. But with that comes the danger that, like the pot of gold, it is always just out of reach.
I have been saying, literally, will no one think of the children, from an intellectual rather than emotional perspective, such as I possess one of the former. I gave the example of a six-yr old in July who, if they persist, will have been living with restrictions for 25% of their lives. That is shocking in concept enough.
But what really hit home was @Isam's post saying his 15-month old hadn't had any social contact with anyone outside their family. Quite extraordinary.
Sorry if I misled, he did go to baby massage classes and see some other children pre lockdown, although he was only four months then, and in the late summer we had a weekend away with friends their kids, in Hampshire. He loved it! But probably only about four or five interactions with other kids since last March and none since November.
That's still pretty shocking; I'm sure he will hoover up all and every interaction once he is able but that is a cost of this lockdown. For him an extra month is a non-trivial part of his life. An extra five months (to July as many seem to be saying/happy with) of restrictions, a huge amount.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
How is excess deaths a "shitshow" they are the single most reliable statistic for gauging prior infection rates. The reason they are difficult to compare right now is because other countries are obfuscating and hiding their excess deaths data, that will change as national statistics bodies catch up and the political heat goes away.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
Deaths happen in a pandemic. Everybody dies eventually.
The UK's excess deaths numbers per million are much, much lower than some other large countries and overall will probably be pretty average once all is said and done.
What matters is ending the pandemic so no more die. That's vaccines.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
How is excess deaths a "shitshow" they are the single most reliable statistic for gauging prior infection rates. The reason they are difficult to compare right now is because other countries are obfuscating and hiding their excess deaths data, that will change as national statistics bodies catch up and the political heat goes away.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
How is excess deaths a "shitshow" they are the single most reliable statistic for gauging prior infection rates. The reason they are difficult to compare right now is because other countries are obfuscating and hiding their excess deaths data, that will change as national statistics bodies catch up and the political heat goes away.
Yeah right.
Why don't you tell us some more about how ineffective AZN is? You were quite big on that until recently.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
How is excess deaths a "shitshow" they are the single most reliable statistic for gauging prior infection rates. The reason they are difficult to compare right now is because other countries are obfuscating and hiding their excess deaths data, that will change as national statistics bodies catch up and the political heat goes away.
Yeah right.
Why don't you tell us some more about how ineffective AZN is? You were quite big on that until recently.
He hates the fact the UK is doing a good job and would rather see more of his own compatriots die than have the pandemic end.
The question to ask the DUP never changes: We know what you don't want. What do you want? It is a question they will never answer and whole political careers have been built on it. It is time to call their bluff.
We are where we are in part because of the DUP and their money.
Perhaps the roundabout under the Isle of Man would be a perfect location for the customs and standards checkpoints required to move stuff through these tunnels. The IoM government could make a killing in offering to run them as an impartial 3rd party. And have big duty free stores as well.
Also no speed limit so it would be a great drift spot. *welds up diff*
The 997 and most of the 991 Cup cars have motorsport VINs which means you can't register them even if you wanted to. They are also a complete pain the dick to take outside the UK now as you need a carnet.
The 991.2 Benelux Cup cars (like mine) have normal VINs so in theory you can register them. In practice they would be a horrible road car (solid bushings, etc.) and difficult to get through an MoT even for an accomplished and confident briber like me. People have successfully got them road registered in Czechia.
So long as it has something stamped in the windscreen, and export paperwork from the origin country, I reckon I could get plates for it out here. They have full light clusters and a speedo, would just need some tyres and be good to go!
Off Topic
I registered an old Vauxhall Vectra for use in Galicia in 2007. It wasn't that easy, apart from the paperwork an inspection was required, headlights had to be changed to those from an LHD car and all tyres had to have the same speed rating, so no mixing H and Vs, among a long list of other minor impositions.
That said, it was easier than registering a Japanese import with the DVLA. An SVA report would have been handy, but at £150 a pop, I did all my own research. Proving the car's exact age was a trial, particularly as the car was a Rover Group product and the liquidators of MG Rover destroyed all the production records. You would have no chance of registering a car with a Motorsport VIN in the UK, even if it had been road registered elsewhere.
Of course using an alternative VIN would be very illegal.
Being poor, stressed & unemployed is not good for one's health either.
Something that many on PB simply wouldn't have a clue about.
Is the NHS going to be overwhelmed? No? Then open up more.
Although we are now as a matter of weeks away I see, as you do, no great harm in waiting, having come this far. But with that comes the danger that, like the pot of gold, it is always just out of reach.
I have been saying, literally, will no one think of the children, from an intellectual rather than emotional perspective, such as I possess one of the former. I gave the example of a six-yr old in July who, if they persist, will have been living with restrictions for 25% of their lives. That is shocking in concept enough.
But what really hit home was @Isam's post saying his 15-month old hadn't had any social contact with anyone outside their family. Quite extraordinary.
Sorry if I misled, he did go to baby massage classes and see some other children pre lockdown, although he was only four months then, and in the late summer we had a weekend away with friends their kids, in Hampshire. He loved it! But probably only about four or five interactions with other kids since last March and none since November.
That's still pretty shocking; I'm sure he will hoover up all and every interaction once he is able but that is a cost of this lockdown. For him an extra month is a non-trivial part of his life. An extra five months (to July as many seem to be saying/happy with) of restrictions, a huge amount.
Being poor, stressed & unemployed is not good for one's health either.
Something that many on PB simply wouldn't have a clue about.
Is the NHS going to be overwhelmed? No? Then open up more.
Although we are now as a matter of weeks away I see, as you do, no great harm in waiting, having come this far. But with that comes the danger that, like the pot of gold, it is always just out of reach.
I have been saying, literally, will no one think of the children, from an intellectual rather than emotional perspective, such as I possess one of the former. I gave the example of a six-yr old in July who, if they persist, will have been living with restrictions for 25% of their lives. That is shocking in concept enough.
But what really hit home was @Isam's post saying his 15-month old hadn't had any social contact with anyone outside their family. Quite extraordinary.
Sorry if I misled, he did go to baby massage classes and see some other children pre lockdown, although he was only four months then, and in the late summer we had a weekend away with friends their kids, in Hampshire. He loved it! But probably only about four or five interactions with other kids since last March and none since November.
That's still pretty shocking; I'm sure he will hoover up all and every interaction once he is able but that is a cost of this lockdown. For him an extra month is a non-trivial part of his life. An extra five months (to July as many seem to be saying/happy with) of restrictions, a huge amount.
I don't think we have any idea how much damage is being done to very young children. I have client whose child was born in April last year. Only child in a single parent household. She'll have spent practically all her first year of life isolated from any direct human contact other than her mother. On the rate occasions when she meets th one friend in her mother's support bubble, she screams. Hopefully she'll bounce back from this in time but who knows?
For those outside the paywall, the argument is that we won't get back to the old economy - not that we won't get back to the old life. It's the old saws about wfh becoming increasingly important and all that that implies. To which I'd reply, well, probably. But that was going to happen anyway. And the extent to which it does happen is unclear. Meanwhile, the consensus of planning and investment decisions in Manchester still seems to be expecting to need more office space. I think this is based on increase in jobs outweighing the shift to wfh. But really, there's a lot of guesswork associated with these predictions.
Timothy also falls into the old trap of "ah there will be fewer commuters, so fewer restaurants and more city centre housing" not realising that this is circular – if you increase residence in city centres you also increase demand for services e.g. restaurants!
It's not just in the EU, in Australia there have been complaints about the plan to use the AZ vaccine because of the crap spread about AZ by European politicians.
I saw somebody on Discord say, 'Oxford? Is that the fucking shit one?' Xaxaxa, as the Russians say.
Being poor, stressed & unemployed is not good for one's health either.
Something that many on PB simply wouldn't have a clue about.
Is the NHS going to be overwhelmed? No? Then open up more.
Although we are now as a matter of weeks away I see, as you do, no great harm in waiting, having come this far. But with that comes the danger that, like the pot of gold, it is always just out of reach.
I have been saying, literally, will no one think of the children, from an intellectual rather than emotional perspective, such as I possess one of the former. I gave the example of a six-yr old in July who, if they persist, will have been living with restrictions for 25% of their lives. That is shocking in concept enough.
But what really hit home was @Isam's post saying his 15-month old hadn't had any social contact with anyone outside their family. Quite extraordinary.
Sorry if I misled, he did go to baby massage classes and see some other children pre lockdown, although he was only four months then, and in the late summer we had a weekend away with friends their kids, in Hampshire. He loved it! But probably only about four or five interactions with other kids since last March and none since November.
That's still pretty shocking; I'm sure he will hoover up all and every interaction once he is able but that is a cost of this lockdown. For him an extra month is a non-trivial part of his life. An extra five months (to July as many seem to be saying/happy with) of restrictions, a huge amount.
I don't think we have any idea how much damage is being done to very young children. I have client whose child was born in April last year. Only child in a single parent household. She'll have spent practically all her adult life isolated from any direct human contact other than her mother. On the rate occasions when she meets th one friend in her mother's support bubble, she screams. Hopefully she'll bounce back from this in time but who knows?
Absolutely.
And as I have said previously, my sister (three children - older now school/uni) put it like this: hopefully they are young enough to get over it; and not so young for it to be formative.
I don't have a particular interest in this, but on the evidence presented, there is no legal action (merely a letter from a firm of solicitors that asks for actions to be taken and leaves the door open to legal action if those actions are not taken).
Bollocks.
A letter from lawyers was sent demanding actions and demanding payment of £2,500. That's legal action.
It may not be courts, but getting lawyers to demand £2,500 off someone is legal action. What else would you call it? An invoice for services rendered?
Personally I would call it bullying. And those holding elected office should not do it. Period.
The question to ask the DUP never changes: We know what you don't want. What do you want? It is a question they will never answer and whole political careers have been built on it. It is time to call their bluff.
What they want is for the border to be in Ireland not the Irish Sea, Foster knows she cannot say that publicly now but if Unionist parties combined got a majority at Stormont next year ie DUP + UUP + TUV, that is what they would likely push for.
Otherwise it would need a closer alignment to EEA rules by the whole UK to remove the Irish Sea border, which would require a PM Starmer in 2024
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
On a long enough time line I'm afraid to inform you that the mortality rate for all humans is 100%.
On foreign travel, nearly all the statistics give the number of trips but give no indication of how many are the same people going abroad more than once.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
On a long enough time line I'm afraid to inform you that the mortality rate for all humans is 100%.
Context gets lost in this debate. Covid is not the be all and end all.
Over 600k Brits die every single year normally.
The overwhelming majority of Care Home residents die within 12 months of entering the Care Home.
There will be more Care Home residents that have died of natural causes having lost all contact with their families in the final months of their life than there will be who have died from Covid.
There will be over half a million elderly people who've died of natural causes (and millions more who do not have much longer naturally left) who've essentially lost a very valuable year of life.
There's tragedies all around us in this mess and the idea that its possible to halt death is preposterous nonsense. The only thing that's possible to do is halt the pandemic - and that's vaccines. Vaccines matter more than everything else combined.
Just reading through the thread, and need to check that I've got this right.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
Perhaps the roundabout under the Isle of Man would be a perfect location for the customs and standards checkpoints required to move stuff through these tunnels. The IoM government could make a killing in offering to run them as an impartial 3rd party. And have big duty free stores as well.
Also no speed limit so it would be a great drift spot. *welds up diff*
The 997 and most of the 991 Cup cars have motorsport VINs which means you can't register them even if you wanted to. They are also a complete pain the dick to take outside the UK now as you need a carnet.
The 991.2 Benelux Cup cars (like mine) have normal VINs so in theory you can register them. In practice they would be a horrible road car (solid bushings, etc.) and difficult to get through an MoT even for an accomplished and confident briber like me. People have successfully got them road registered in Czechia.
So long as it has something stamped in the windscreen, and export paperwork from the origin country, I reckon I could get plates for it out here. They have full light clusters and a speedo, would just need some tyres and be good to go!
Off Topic
I registered an old Vauxhall Vectra for use in Galicia in 2007. It wasn't that easy, apart from the paperwork an inspection was required, headlights had to be changed to those from an LHD car and all tyres had to have the same speed rating, so no mixing H and Vs, among a long list of other minor impositions.
That said, it was easier than registering a Japanese import with the DVLA. An SVA report would have been handy, but at £150 a pop, I did all my own research. Proving the car's exact age was a trial, particularly as the car was a Rover Group product and the liquidators of MG Rover destroyed all the production records. You would have no chance of registering a car with a Motorsport VIN in the UK, even if it had been road registered elsewhere.
Of course using an alternative VIN would be very illegal.
Yes, DVLA are pretty hot when it comes to registering imports. LHD isn’t a problem, but headlights need to point the right way, indicators need to be yellow at the back and have repeaters on the side, rear fog light present, speedo needs to read mph etc.
In recent times, cars have become a lot more standardised though, and digital dashboards make it easier still. Older JDM cars can be a pain to convert even though they’re RHD, but if they’re old enough to be a classic then it’s exempt from almost all the rules. Don’t forget the Japanese FM radio, which works on a weird frequency range, and in modern cars can mean replacing half the dashboard!
Just reading through the thread, and need to check that I've got this right.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
Err, except in this thread we've had people previously and currently defend European politicians briefing against the AZ vaccine. On point 1, the last time Spain released their excess deaths figure it was 50% higher than their declared COVID deaths. Since then they've stopped releasing that data. Italy likewise, their excess mortality was running at around 60% higher than declared COVID deaths and then the statistics body put a temporary hold on releasing the data.
It's not just the likes of Russia and China or Trump trying to cover up excess deaths data. The ONS should be applauded that not only have they continued to release the data, but that they have made a specific series so that it is easily accessible to journalists and ordinary people. In Spain El Pais had to manually collate regional data from PDFs into a single report, the Spanish government is making it purposefully difficult to get the data to discourage people from looking into it. Our government has provided a simple API which requires no special authorisation to access.
You don't want to see or hear anything good abour the UK, maybe it causes some kind of emotional pain now that we're not in the EU, I don't know. The simple fact is that the UK has got extremely transparent data and statistical reporting, it isn't comparable to very many other countries. Israel is probably the only other nation that does the same level of public data releasing as we do and Italy for COVID has got fairly detailed information but they have hidden their excess deaths away for a long time now.
The question to ask the DUP never changes: We know what you don't want. What do you want? It is a question they will never answer and whole political careers have been built on it. It is time to call their bluff.
What they want is for the border to be in Ireland not the Irish Sea, Foster knows she cannot say that publicly now but if Unionist parties combined got a majority at Stormont next year ie DUP + UUP + TUV, that is what they would likely push for.
Otherwise it would need a closer alignment to EEA rules by the whole UK to remove the Irish Sea border, which would require a PM Starmer in 2024
That's my impression too. If the DUP were to go on Bullseye, lose, and have Jim Bowen cackle "Here's what you could have won!", whipping the wrapping off "A hard border on the island of Ireland", the smiles would be very forced.
Just reading through the thread, and need to check that I've got this right.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
Yes. How often have you asked that question about the constant, repetitive, and rather boring attacks on the UK from various posters over the last several years? Turnabout is fair play.
On your second point, it's not just deaths in the EU that concern us. Oxford/AZN is likely to be the primary vaccine for billions in the developing world due to its low cost and ease of transport, so if the EU's campaign against the vaccine increases anti-vax sentiment there even a little, then many thousands of lives could indeed be lost unnecessarily. That's the price of their spite.
The 2 biggest screwups of this pandemic by our government are moving people into care homes and allowing unrestricted international travel for most of the last 14 months. Both undoubtedly caused thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of unnecessary deaths.
On the first I would say this. This decision was made at the time that we were seeking to set up the Nightingale hospitals, where the media were full of pictures of the disaster in northern Italy and the many, many unnecessary deaths suffered there because their health system was overwhelmed. The expectation of the government at the time was that the NHS would be similarly overwhelmed in early course. I think SAGE and other advisors from the NHS were seriously close to panic, and rightly so.
In that environment some pretty tough decisions were made. A lot of hospital beds were filled with what we have traditionally called bed blockers, people who didn't really need to be in hospital but were because our care system is crap and a suitable plan had not been put together. I suspect instructions were given to move these people out whether they had a full care plan or not so that the beds were available for those for whom they might do more good. So they were punted to care homes with minimal plans and, critically, no checks as to whether they had themselves been infected.
As it turns out the Nightingale hospitals were barely used, although the NHS was stretched severely it did not fall over and things did not turn out as bad as had entirely reasonably been feared. That makes the decision to move people out to care homes where inadequately trained and provisioned staff failed to prevent the spread of the disease amongst many of our most vulnerable look very wrong. And it was wrong, but only in hindsight.
I am not saying this is right, I simply say that there is a plausible explanation for what happened and that explanation is consistent with the same thing happening in England, Scotland, Wales and NI, apparently independently. I think it is possible that this decision might be justifiable at the time it was made.
Our policies on air travel throughout the pandemic, however, I simply find beyond rational explanation.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
On a long enough time line I'm afraid to inform you that the mortality rate for all humans is 100%.
Context gets lost in this debate. Covid is not the be all and end all.
Over 600k Brits die every single year normally.
The overwhelming majority of Care Home residents die within 12 months of entering the Care Home.
There will be more Care Home residents that have died of natural causes having lost all contact with their families in the final months of their life than there will be who have died from Covid.
There will be over half a million elderly people who've died of natural causes (and millions more who do not have much longer naturally left) who've essentially lost a very valuable year of life.
There's tragedies all around us in this mess and the idea that its possible to halt death is preposterous nonsense. The only thing that's possible to do is halt the pandemic - and that's vaccines. Vaccines matter more than everything else combined.
Any chance you might stop saying "and that's vaccines"?
Just reading through the thread, and need to check that I've got this right.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
Yes. How often have you asked that question about the constant, repetitive, and rather boring attacks on the UK from various posters over the last several years? Turnabout is fair play.
On your second point, it's not just deaths in the EU that concern us. Oxford/AZN is likely to be the primary vaccine for billions in the developing world due to its low cost and ease of transport, so if the EU's campaign against the vaccine increases anti-vax sentiment there even a little, then many thousands of lives could indeed be lost unnecessarily. That's the price of their spite.
Many thousands of lives could be a severe underestimate. Tens or hundreds of thousands of lives potentially - plus providing the breeding grounds for new variants to arise.
Perhaps the roundabout under the Isle of Man would be a perfect location for the customs and standards checkpoints required to move stuff through these tunnels. The IoM government could make a killing in offering to run them as an impartial 3rd party. And have big duty free stores as well.
Also no speed limit so it would be a great drift spot. *welds up diff*
The 997 and most of the 991 Cup cars have motorsport VINs which means you can't register them even if you wanted to. They are also a complete pain the dick to take outside the UK now as you need a carnet.
The 991.2 Benelux Cup cars (like mine) have normal VINs so in theory you can register them. In practice they would be a horrible road car (solid bushings, etc.) and difficult to get through an MoT even for an accomplished and confident briber like me. People have successfully got them road registered in Czechia.
So long as it has something stamped in the windscreen, and export paperwork from the origin country, I reckon I could get plates for it out here. They have full light clusters and a speedo, would just need some tyres and be good to go!
Off Topic
I registered an old Vauxhall Vectra for use in Galicia in 2007. It wasn't that easy, apart from the paperwork an inspection was required, headlights had to be changed to those from an LHD car and all tyres had to have the same speed rating, so no mixing H and Vs, among a long list of other minor impositions.
That said, it was easier than registering a Japanese import with the DVLA. An SVA report would have been handy, but at £150 a pop, I did all my own research. Proving the car's exact age was a trial, particularly as the car was a Rover Group product and the liquidators of MG Rover destroyed all the production records. You would have no chance of registering a car with a Motorsport VIN in the UK, even if it had been road registered elsewhere.
Of course using an alternative VIN would be very illegal.
Yes, DVLA are pretty hot when it comes to registering imports. LHD isn’t a problem, but headlights need to point the right way, indicators need to be yellow at the back and have repeaters on the side, rear fog light present, speedo needs to read mph etc.
In recent times, cars have become a lot more standardised though, and digital dashboards make it easier still. Older JDM cars can be a pain to convert even though they’re RHD, but if they’re old enough to be a classic then it’s exempt from almost all the rules. Don’t forget the Japanese FM radio, which works on a weird frequency range, and in modern cars can mean replacing half the dashboard!
Still off topic.
Thanks, KMh speedo is OK for UK, but no rear fog light is an MOT fail. I hadn't thought of the radio, which is the original, but as it is single DIN it is easily replaced either with a matching used UK radio or a new, bluetooth enabled unit.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
On a long enough time line I'm afraid to inform you that the mortality rate for all humans is 100%.
Context gets lost in this debate. Covid is not the be all and end all.
Over 600k Brits die every single year normally.
The overwhelming majority of Care Home residents die within 12 months of entering the Care Home.
There will be more Care Home residents that have died of natural causes having lost all contact with their families in the final months of their life than there will be who have died from Covid.
There will be over half a million elderly people who've died of natural causes (and millions more who do not have much longer naturally left) who've essentially lost a very valuable year of life.
There's tragedies all around us in this mess and the idea that its possible to halt death is preposterous nonsense. The only thing that's possible to do is halt the pandemic - and that's vaccines. Vaccines matter more than everything else combined.
Any chance you might stop saying "and that's vaccines"?
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
On a long enough time line I'm afraid to inform you that the mortality rate for all humans is 100%.
Context gets lost in this debate. Covid is not the be all and end all.
Over 600k Brits die every single year normally.
The overwhelming majority of Care Home residents die within 12 months of entering the Care Home.
There will be more Care Home residents that have died of natural causes having lost all contact with their families in the final months of their life than there will be who have died from Covid.
There will be over half a million elderly people who've died of natural causes (and millions more who do not have much longer naturally left) who've essentially lost a very valuable year of life.
There's tragedies all around us in this mess and the idea that its possible to halt death is preposterous nonsense. The only thing that's possible to do is halt the pandemic - and that's vaccines. Vaccines matter more than everything else combined.
Any chance you might stop saying "and that's vaccines"?
QTWAIN.
Not until people like @bigjohnowls stop downplaying vaccines and try to big up other metrics instead.
Because that data is historical, relatively meaningless and notoriously inaccurate.
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
Excess deaths is also a shitshow though
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
Excess deaths is wrong? How?
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
Deaths don't matter
At least you are honest
On a long enough time line I'm afraid to inform you that the mortality rate for all humans is 100%.
Context gets lost in this debate. Covid is not the be all and end all.
Over 600k Brits die every single year normally.
The overwhelming majority of Care Home residents die within 12 months of entering the Care Home.
There will be more Care Home residents that have died of natural causes having lost all contact with their families in the final months of their life than there will be who have died from Covid.
There will be over half a million elderly people who've died of natural causes (and millions more who do not have much longer naturally left) who've essentially lost a very valuable year of life.
There's tragedies all around us in this mess and the idea that its possible to halt death is preposterous nonsense. The only thing that's possible to do is halt the pandemic - and that's vaccines. Vaccines matter more than everything else combined.
Any chance you might stop saying "and that's vaccines"?
Why should he? It is absolutely on point.
The FBPE crew can't handle it. It burns them up inside that the UK is succeeding outside of the EU.
Just reading through the thread, and need to check that I've got this right.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
Err, except in this thread we've had people previously and currently defend European politicians briefing against the AZ vaccine. On point 1, the last time Spain released their excess deaths figure it was 50% higher than their declared COVID deaths. Since then they've stopped releasing that data. Italy likewise, their excess mortality was running at around 60% higher than declared COVID deaths and then the statistics body put a temporary hold on releasing the data.
It's not just the likes of Russia and China or Trump trying to cover up excess deaths data. The ONS should be applauded that not only have they continued to release the data, but that they have made a specific series so that it is easily accessible to journalists and ordinary people. In Spain El Pais had to manually collate regional data from PDFs into a single report, the Spanish government is making it purposefully difficult to get the data to discourage people from looking into it. Our government has provided a simple API which requires no special authorisation to access.
You don't want to see or hear anything good abour the UK, maybe it causes some kind of emotional pain now that we're not in the EU, I don't know. The simple fact is that the UK has got extremely transparent data and statistical reporting, it isn't comparable to very many other countries. Israel is probably the only other nation that does the same level of public data releasing as we do and Italy for COVID has got fairly detailed information but they have hidden their excess deaths away for a long time now.
I've no idea how you got from my post the ludicrous notion that I don't want to see or hear anything good about the UK. That's almost offensive, but whatever.
I find that you, and Mr Thompson, are so absolutely certain that you know everything about everything and are completely right on all matters rather frustrating; especially the tendency to regard opinions as 'facts' . Personally, I'm full of self doubt: arrogant enough to think I'm rather bright, but humble enough to acknowledge that stuff is complex and there's lots I don't know or get wrong. When we look back on all this in due course, we may well be able to reach some reliable conclusions on relative performance of different countries. Until then, most of it is just pissing in the wind; it doesn't really lend itself to the level of certainty you and others project.
The 2 biggest screwups of this pandemic by our government are moving people into care homes and allowing unrestricted international travel for most of the last 14 months. Both undoubtedly caused thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of unnecessary deaths.
On the first I would say this. This decision was made at the time that we were seeking to set up the Nightingale hospitals, where the media were full of pictures of the disaster in northern Italy and the many, many unnecessary deaths suffered there because their health system was overwhelmed. The expectation of the government at the time was that the NHS would be similarly overwhelmed in early course. I think SAGE and other advisors from the NHS were seriously close to panic, and rightly so.
In that environment some pretty tough decisions were made. A lot of hospital beds were filled with what we have traditionally called bed blockers, people who didn't really need to be in hospital but were because our care system is crap and a suitable plan had not been put together. I suspect instructions were given to move these people out whether they had a full care plan or not so that the beds were available for those for whom they might do more good. So they were punted to care homes with minimal plans and, critically, no checks as to whether they had themselves been infected.
As it turns out the Nightingale hospitals were barely used, although the NHS was stretched severely it did not fall over and things did not turn out as bad as had entirely reasonably been feared. That makes the decision to move people out to care homes where inadequately trained and provisioned staff failed to prevent the spread of the disease amongst many of our most vulnerable look very wrong. And it was wrong, but only in hindsight.
I am not saying this is right, I simply say that there is a plausible explanation for what happened and that explanation is consistent with the same thing happening in England, Scotland, Wales and NI, apparently independently. I think it is possible that this decision might be justifiable at the time it was made.
Our policies on air travel throughout the pandemic, however, I simply find beyond rational explanation.
Good post. Not to say that it would have changed things - perhaps it wouldn't have - but its attempt to "keep the UK open", and thereby continue with international air travel, might have been a (large?) factor in the government going all in and early on the vaccines.
Presumably each tunnel would be extremely expensive, so even if any of them make sense would you need tunnels to both Liverpool and Heysham? If so, maybe add another fron Anglesea?
What about a zip wire across the Irish Sea from the top of Snowdon?
Just reading through the thread, and need to check that I've got this right.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
1 - The UK's current death rate has now come back down to exactly the EU average.
2 - That's what I argued last week, whilst suggesting it might not be inevitable if thet get their policies right.
We will know by some time in March.
Without researching 27 datasets, I would suggest that the "virtually all" is more likely to be "approximately half".
Presumably each tunnel would be extremely expensive, so even if any of them make sense would you need tunnels to both Liverpool and Heysham? If so, maybe add another fron Anglesea?
What about a zip wire across the Irish Sea from the top of Snowdon?
Comments
Had the EMA said no that would have been fair enough. They didn't.
Instead the undermining came from the same people who were desperately trying to get their hands on it days earlier.
The AZ Phase III trial had problems with dosing variations and under recruitment of older trial subjects.
Both of these issues seem to have arisen because of the relative inexperience of Oxford University and AZ in vaccine development / manufacture.
I don't think there is any dispute that Moderna and Pfizer ran better trials - remember AZ still hasn't been licensed in the US, so the problem is not just to do with the EU being nasty.
AZ and Oxford however deserve lots of praise for the pricing of their vaccine however.
Why doesn't she f**k off and join the Tories? 😉
One big problem might be solved if there was a requirement for all vehicles entering the tunnel to be electric, although fires would still be an issue. The Mont Blanc fire is not something anyone would want to repeat.
I'm not.
The middle one looks like Blackford to me, but he shouldn't be a courtier surely?
So long as it comes from the French and has no connection whatsoever to Hartlepool then Roger doesn't care about Trumpianism.
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
Contestant on 'Icelandic University Challenge' throws a strop and storms off set after rival team answers winning question
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9285779/Contestant-Icelandic-University-Challenge-storms-set.html
The question to ask the DUP never changes: We know what you don't want. What do you want? It is a question they will never answer and whole political careers have been built on it. It is time to call their bluff.
Didn't someone from SAGE even say that closing/opening NE retail has an almost zero effect on case numbers....?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/21/no-roadmap-can-takeus-back-way-things-used/
(For those not into this kind of analysis, this is not a randomised trial, so comparisons have to take into account other risk factors - age, obviously, but also e.g. regional differences in infections which might matter if there are regional differences in vaccinations. There are many ways of doing that, depending partly on the data available on those other risk factors)
EDIT Second
The UK is actually counting deaths and testing for them properly. Most other countries are underreporting, some quite dramatically.
So why would you be posting that? Its the vaccines that matter. They're the route out, they're the "endgame", they're the way to prevent future deaths.
To which I'd reply, well, probably. But that was going to happen anyway. And the extent to which it does happen is unclear.
Meanwhile, the consensus of planning and investment decisions in Manchester still seems to be expecting to need more office space. I think this is based on increase in jobs outweighing the shift to wfh. But really, there's a lot of guesswork associated with these predictions.
Counting those wrong like March 8th is 3 weeks after mid April
I thought you knew Rob
But according to you its all down to Demographics
That literally shows who is alive and who is dead. It shows fewer excess deaths than total deaths in the UK which makes sense, while almost every other nation is the other way around. So your "per million" chart is meaningless garbage and you know it.
What matters, the only thing that matters really now, is vaccinations.
At least you are honest
https://twitter.com/LiteraryMouse/status/1363755036967374848
The UK's excess deaths numbers per million are much, much lower than some other large countries and overall will probably be pretty average once all is said and done.
What matters is ending the pandemic so no more die. That's vaccines.
Its quite sickening really.
I registered an old Vauxhall Vectra for use in Galicia in 2007. It wasn't that easy, apart from the paperwork an inspection was required, headlights had to be changed to those from an LHD car and all tyres had to have the same speed rating, so no mixing H and Vs, among a long list of other minor impositions.
That said, it was easier than registering a Japanese import with the DVLA. An SVA report would have been handy, but at £150 a pop, I did all my own research. Proving the car's exact age was a trial, particularly as the car was a Rover Group product and the liquidators of MG Rover destroyed all the production records. You would have no chance of registering a car with a Motorsport VIN in the UK, even if it had been road registered elsewhere.
Of course using an alternative VIN would be very illegal.
And as I have said previously, my sister (three children - older now school/uni) put it like this: hopefully they are young enough to get over it; and not so young for it to be formative.
At what age is this optimised? No f***ing clue.
Otherwise it would need a closer alignment to EEA rules by the whole UK to remove the Irish Sea border, which would require a PM Starmer in 2024
Over 600k Brits die every single year normally.
The overwhelming majority of Care Home residents die within 12 months of entering the Care Home.
There will be more Care Home residents that have died of natural causes having lost all contact with their families in the final months of their life than there will be who have died from Covid.
There will be over half a million elderly people who've died of natural causes (and millions more who do not have much longer naturally left) who've essentially lost a very valuable year of life.
There's tragedies all around us in this mess and the idea that its possible to halt death is preposterous nonsense. The only thing that's possible to do is halt the pandemic - and that's vaccines. Vaccines matter more than everything else combined.
1. The UK's current very high death rate compared to most others, in Europe and beyond, tells us nothing. We need to wait for a more reliable excess death measure before we can compare properly, and that is some way off. (And anyway, foreigners aren't as good at collecting data as us.)
2. The EU's absymal record on vaccine rollout is inevitably going to lead to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people dying unnecessarily. We know this to be true (although death rates are currently lower in virtually all EU countries than ours, it's just a matter of time before they overtake us), even though there's no evidence for it yet.
Trouble is, there's nobody on here defending the EU vaccination approach (despite their being some initial rationale for it), but it still merits constantly repetitive attacks on the EU from several posters. It's a bit boring: the EU messed up. Do we need to keep repeating it?
The figure for 2019 was 16% according to this, up from 11% in 2011.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/480160/share-of-britons-going-on-holiday-abroad/
In recent times, cars have become a lot more standardised though, and digital dashboards make it easier still. Older JDM cars can be a pain to convert even though they’re RHD, but if they’re old enough to be a classic then it’s exempt from almost all the rules. Don’t forget the Japanese FM radio, which works on a weird frequency range, and in modern cars can mean replacing half the dashboard!
It's not just the likes of Russia and China or Trump trying to cover up excess deaths data. The ONS should be applauded that not only have they continued to release the data, but that they have made a specific series so that it is easily accessible to journalists and ordinary people. In Spain El Pais had to manually collate regional data from PDFs into a single report, the Spanish government is making it purposefully difficult to get the data to discourage people from looking into it. Our government has provided a simple API which requires no special authorisation to access.
You don't want to see or hear anything good abour the UK, maybe it causes some kind of emotional pain now that we're not in the EU, I don't know. The simple fact is that the UK has got extremely transparent data and statistical reporting, it isn't comparable to very many other countries. Israel is probably the only other nation that does the same level of public data releasing as we do and Italy for COVID has got fairly detailed information but they have hidden their excess deaths away for a long time now.
https://unherd.com/2021/02/how-israel-won-the-vaccine-wars/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3
On your second point, it's not just deaths in the EU that concern us. Oxford/AZN is likely to be the primary vaccine for billions in the developing world due to its low cost and ease of transport, so if the EU's campaign against the vaccine increases anti-vax sentiment there even a little, then many thousands of lives could indeed be lost unnecessarily. That's the price of their spite.
On the first I would say this. This decision was made at the time that we were seeking to set up the Nightingale hospitals, where the media were full of pictures of the disaster in northern Italy and the many, many unnecessary deaths suffered there because their health system was overwhelmed. The expectation of the government at the time was that the NHS would be similarly overwhelmed in early course. I think SAGE and other advisors from the NHS were seriously close to panic, and rightly so.
In that environment some pretty tough decisions were made. A lot of hospital beds were filled with what we have traditionally called bed blockers, people who didn't really need to be in hospital but were because our care system is crap and a suitable plan had not been put together. I suspect instructions were given to move these people out whether they had a full care plan or not so that the beds were available for those for whom they might do more good. So they were punted to care homes with minimal plans and, critically, no checks as to whether they had themselves been infected.
As it turns out the Nightingale hospitals were barely used, although the NHS was stretched severely it did not fall over and things did not turn out as bad as had entirely reasonably been feared. That makes the decision to move people out to care homes where inadequately trained and provisioned staff failed to prevent the spread of the disease amongst many of our most vulnerable look very wrong. And it was wrong, but only in hindsight.
I am not saying this is right, I simply say that there is a plausible explanation for what happened and that explanation is consistent with the same thing happening in England, Scotland, Wales and NI, apparently independently. I think it is possible that this decision might be justifiable at the time it was made.
Our policies on air travel throughout the pandemic, however, I simply find beyond rational explanation.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/162PJKbIKUFEjLevf_xZZjmuGmhB2v5jO/view
Note that the study specifically covered the single-dose regime only.
Thanks, KMh speedo is OK for UK, but no rear fog light is an MOT fail. I hadn't thought of the radio, which is the original, but as it is single DIN it is easily replaced either with a matching used UK radio or a new, bluetooth enabled unit.
Not until people like @bigjohnowls stop downplaying vaccines and try to big up other metrics instead.
I find that you, and Mr Thompson, are so absolutely certain that you know everything about everything and are completely right on all matters rather frustrating; especially the tendency to regard opinions as 'facts' . Personally, I'm full of self doubt: arrogant enough to think I'm rather bright, but humble enough to acknowledge that stuff is complex and there's lots I don't know or get wrong. When we look back on all this in due course, we may well be able to reach some reliable conclusions on relative performance of different countries. Until then, most of it is just pissing in the wind; it doesn't really lend itself to the level of certainty you and others project.
First of a whole raft I expect.
2 - That's what I argued last week, whilst suggesting it might not be inevitable if thet get their policies right.
We will know by some time in March.
Without researching 27 datasets, I would suggest that the "virtually all" is more likely to be "approximately half".
https://www.theengineer.co.uk/hydrogen-based-steel-making-liberty-steel-france/