Imagine complaining incessantly about covid and lockdown and then turning down the one thing that can make them go away. Christ...
I'm not sure we know their views on covid and lockdown. They could be worried about side effects or something.
My comment was intended to be general. Although I imagine @contrarian would also refuse the vaccine if offered. Happy for him to correct me though.
OK, it seemed as though you were referring to contrarian's family members, who (as far as I know) don't post here, so we don't know what their views are.
They don;'t but I am probably the moderate in all this.
Lets just say Bill Gates is not on wifey's christmas card list.
Nothing that a few well placed nanobots can't fix, I'm sure.
Indeed, Gates is just trying to help. He has no view of how people should live their lives whatsoever.
Worst numbers since daily reported started 6 weeks ago:
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1363849005965443075 Clearly something is going on. Lack of supply? Stockpiling for 2nd doses? Both? The government must know that some serious supply is coming soon with the targets they have set.
They need to set themselves another Stretch Target. All the Priority Groups by mid-March. Do it. They may not make it but these difficult challenges certainly raise the general game. We saw it with tests, as well.
Maybe its more difficult to get younger people to have a vaccine at the weekend? Not sure why that would be but maybe it is.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
If only...
mRNA vaccines are used as the recipie for a cell to make proteins (in this case the Spike protein). Viruses do the same, by infecting a cell with its RNA*, which is then used to make viral proteins.
If Toby Young believes mRNA genetically alter people, then so does every human virus.
I suppose antivaxxers will be protected alongside Islamists and nazis when Toby is "Free Speech Champion"
*There are some DNA viruses too, but not coronavirus.
Dr John Lee wrote in the Speccie that 40% of the human genome is incorporated virus material.
Worst numbers since daily reported started 6 weeks ago:
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1363849005965443075 Clearly something is going on. Lack of supply? Stockpiling for 2nd doses? Both? The government must know that some serious supply is coming soon with the targets they have set.
That's terrible. I was concerned after the Welsh figure. Hmpft
It's been coming. I have been muttering about the trend for several days now. Some clarity as to supply would be helpful.
Speculation on Twitter that this is a shortage of AZ, which was expected - but which is also expected to be amended later in the week, then onwards.
Let's hope so. Because if we permanently slow down to jabbing 0.1% of the population a day, rather than 0.5%, we are in this shit til the Autumn
A responsible government would have required that from the start. Social distancing was impossible in school. So masks were required to stem the vast transmission rates in schools. Yet instead the government banned the wearing of masks because it might "scare the pupils" - no, it might highlight your lies about how Covid is all over go back to work and shop you plebs.
If a vaccine is 98% effective against illness and then 98% effective against serious illness and death - are the cumulative. So out of 100000 people 2000 would get it and of them 40 would get seriously ill and Die?
No, they're not cumulative, and they're always in comparison to what happens without the vaccine.
So, if previously out of 100,000 people exposed to the virus, 90,000 got it, now 1,800 would get it.
If 10,000 out of those 100,000 got seriously ill, now it will be 200.
If 1,000 died, now 20 die.
@Gaussian Many Thanks. That makes sense - I heard someone saying that the figures must be wrong because it was more effective at stopping serious illness than death and that death is a pretty serious illness, but I realised I didn't know what they meant
Sorry but once everyone is vaccinated this is over.
Yes ~10% of those vaccinated may die, that's sad, but everyone dies eventually. We'll have done our best to protect them.
As for the refuseniks? Fuck them. If they die, they die. Their fault.
We don't have lockdowns to prevent smokers from getting cancer. Anyone who can't be arsed to get vaccinated and catches it once the vaccine is freely available is their own damned fool fault.
Paragraph 2 demonstrates the beating heart of a caring Conservative Party. Thankyou for your kindness Philip.
What do you want or expect?
Do you expect nobody to ever die ever again?
I hate to break it to you but everybody dies eventually.
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and it is fatal.
Anyone who knows someone who is refusing to take the vaccine has a duty to very strongly encourage them to have it in my opinion. It is bordering on the grossly irresponsible not to have it when offered. But I still think it shouldnt be compulsory.
Anybody who knows someone who is fat should strongly encourage them to stop eating. Quite apart from the climate change implications of over consumption, these people are flagrantly failing to protect the NHS.
Our health service has to perform all kinds of treatments because of their gross negligence, resources that could be used to Save Lives.
People are literally fattening their fellow Britons to death. There is blood on their bellies.
Sorry but once everyone is vaccinated this is over.
Yes ~10% of those vaccinated may die, that's sad, but everyone dies eventually. We'll have done our best to protect them.
As for the refuseniks? Fuck them. If they die, they die. Their fault.
We don't have lockdowns to prevent smokers from getting cancer. Anyone who can't be arsed to get vaccinated and catches it once the vaccine is freely available is their own damned fool fault.
Paragraph 2 demonstrates the beating heart of a caring Conservative Party. Thankyou for your kindness Philip.
What do you propose after vaccinations are completed then?
It was the casual inevitability of "everyone dies eventually" that brought a tear to my eye. My interpretation was to quote BSM Williams (Windsor Davies) "Oh dear, never mind!"
What do you want?
Do you want to deny that? Do you want to prevent it? That's tilting at windmills and counterproductive, we need to accept death and taxes as unpleasant facts of life that do occur.
We can do our best at postponing death by vaccinating anyone. What we can never do is prevent it.
All we can do is thank our lucky stars for the innovative medical science which provides protection against new diseases which seek to carry us off before our time.
Anyone who knows someone who is refusing to take the vaccine has a duty to very strongly encourage them to have it in my opinion. It is bordering on the grossly irresponsible not to have it when offered. But I still think it shouldnt be compulsory.
Anybody who knows someone who is fat should strongly encourage them to stop eating. Quite apart from the climate change implications of over consumption, these people are flagrantly failing to protect the NHS.
Our health service has to perform all kinds of treatments because of their gross negligence, resources that could be used to Save Lives.
People are literally fattening their fellow Britons to death. There is blood on their bellies.
Calories are not airborne contagious and don't follow exponential growth.
Imagine complaining incessantly about covid and lockdown and then turning down the one thing that can make them go away. Christ...
I'm not sure we know their views on covid and lockdown. They could be worried about side effects or something.
My comment was intended to be general. Although I imagine @contrarian would also refuse the vaccine if offered. Happy for him to correct me though.
OK, it seemed as though you were referring to contrarian's family members, who (as far as I know) don't post here, so we don't know what their views are.
They don;'t but I am probably the moderate in all this.
Lets just say Bill Gates is not on wifey's christmas card list.
Nothing that a few well placed nanobots can't fix, I'm sure.
Indeed, Gates is just trying to help. He has no view of how people should live their lives whatsoever.
Well, apart from us all eating artificial meat, driving electric cars and putting up with f****** Edge on our computers, obvs.
Yes - the people who have put themselves in charge of our lives have decided that they need to stay in charge because the vaccine is ONLY 90% effective. It's total lunacy. If a 63% drop on hospital admissions and massive reduction in spread amongst the vaccine hold out mongs was genuinely not enough, then it would become pretty clear that the lesser civil liberty restriction would be compulstory vaccination rather than compulsory house arrest. Either way you absolutely can vaccinate your way out of this and it is terrifying that people in charge are claiming otherwise.
Yes it is total lunacy. Compulsory near house arrest on everyone just because the Government won't face down the refuseniks. They don't even need to make vaccination compulsory. They just need to continue to enforce the tightest restrictions possible on those who refuse vaccinations while relaxing them for everyone else. Then those selfish refuseniks would be beating down the door of vaccination centres and rates would quickly reach 100%.
This is true. I'm not keen on vaccine passports, but as long it remains legal for private businesses to request evidence of vaccination, it will readily become the norm.
That will make for an uncomfortable summer. Oldies head off in droves to the pub while 20-30yr olds are stuck indoors waiting for their jab.
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.
Hmm, from reading what's available the original vaccine drive started in around February with a group of UK biotech companies getting together independently to support the development of the Oxford vaccine. I'm not sure how much of a factor air travel was. I think the government has always seen vaccines as the endgame state so would have done it regardless.
What's interesting is that the UK suffers from almost no vaccine hesitancy and that is in part due to the horrific death rates over the last year and the government linking unlockdown to vaccination. In a perverse way the high death toll may end up meaning a much faster and higher take up of vaccines by the general public. In SK there is much higher vaccine hesitancy, a lot of that is surely because they've not had the alternative of people dying in their thousands and hospitals being overwhelmed leading to indefinite lockdowns.
I think there might be some truth in that. I'm certainly surprised by the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in most of the Germans I know around here in Cologne.
But also look at the past record of vaccination - the UK normally vaccinates more than twice as many over 65s against flu as Germany does. And contributed far more to GAVI than other European countries already 10 years ago, so there's a whole bunch of factors probably.
While the EU vaccine procurement scheme has been crap, it doesn't seem to have been significantly worse than other continental western European countries (ie Switzerland and Norway). And not everything is seen through the lens of Brexit on the continent (I think it's probably true to say that nothing is except Brexit itself, which has barely made the news at all for about 3 years and was over a long time ago so far as most people are concerned), unlike on PB.com. In my entirely anecdotal experience, people are more likely to compare the slow vaccine rollout in Germany with the speed of Israel than with the UK.
Which is an odd one because Germany's second wave has been pretty horrific and I thought the lockdown had just been extended as well. One would hope that people see vaccines as the way out of this, lockdowns aren't an end state. I have to say the German media has had a really poor time of it on the AZ vaccine, it could lead to a prolonged lockdown because people are stupidly not taking it despite it being a really great vaccine. I really, really hope that the UK data coming out over the next few days will convince people to just get it done.
Yes, I can't think of any justification for using "anonymous sources" for claims that a vaccine doesn't work, those 2 newspapers should come clean and say who was spreading such rubbish, or apologise. The German vaccine agency hasn't helped by recommending AZ vaccine only for under 65s - maybe that will change now that more data is available.
The lockdown has just been relaxed, in the sense that in most states schools reopened today, with small groups, no mixing, and masks on all the time. And the second wave has been worse than the first, but still not as bad as many other places, and hospitals have never been close to being overwhelmed - Germany is still treating small numbers of patients from neighbours (as well as sending some equipment and doctors to Portugal).
But, yes lots of "hesitant" people are looking at what happens in Israel and the UK before being keen to take a vaccine. I know a few proper anti-vaxxers too - I don't think they will ever be convinced, on certain topics they are impervious to any contact with reality, though otherwise lovely people - but they are much smaller numbers.
I have no idea if this is true, but I read that the nonsense Handelsblatt report came from a source in the German Health Ministry, and possibly the Health Minister himself: which would explain why journalists were willing to take it at face value.
Surely such a senior politician would not lie about such an important point? Well, yes, he might, if he and his government were really embarrassed by the slow-roll out of the EU vaccine programme in Germany, and they wanted to divert attention.
Tut, tut, tut
In the UK those journos would have been fired a few days later.
What is your source that it was Spahn? (I would be very surprised)
It was some time ago (when the initial furore arose), and I believe - but I cannot prove it as I have forgotten the link - that it was in German media. Maybe the Spiegel?
Dunno. As you say there is reason to think this is untrue, as Spahn also distanced himself from the Handelsblatt claims a day or two later.
A very murky and damaging affair, anyroad. And not even an apology from the paper. Incredible.
I blame the journalists. An "anonymous source" could be literally anyone out to cause trouble, or indeed pure mathematical illiteracy from the journalists. I am no fan of the current German government, but I would be surprised if it was ever in any sense German policy (or a politician at the level of Spahn's wheeze) to try and discredit a vaccine they had ordered millions of doses of. I mean, it doesn't even make any sense on any level, if you think about it. How is that supposed to help anyone's reputation?
What the hell Macron was doing I have no idea, but probably somehow reflecting French anti-vax sentiment. Can't see it gaining him many votes though.
Yes - the people who have put themselves in charge of our lives have decided that they need to stay in charge because the vaccine is ONLY 90% effective. It's total lunacy. If a 63% drop on hospital admissions and massive reduction in spread amongst the vaccine hold out mongs was genuinely not enough, then it would become pretty clear that the lesser civil liberty restriction would be compulstory vaccination rather than compulsory house arrest. Either way you absolutely can vaccinate your way out of this and it is terrifying that people in charge are claiming otherwise.
Yes it is total lunacy. Compulsory near house arrest on everyone just because the Government won't face down the refuseniks. They don't even need to make vaccination compulsory. They just need to continue to enforce the tightest restrictions possible on those who refuse vaccinations while relaxing them for everyone else. Then those selfish refuseniks would be beating down the door of vaccination centres and rates would quickly reach 100%.
This is true. I'm not keen on vaccine passports, but as long it remains legal for private businesses to request evidence of vaccination, it will readily become the norm.
That will make for an uncomfortable summer. Oldies head off in droves to the pub while 20-30yr olds are stuck indoors waiting for their jab.
After having given up a year and a half of their lives for the benefit of the oldies.
If a vaccine is 98% effective against illness and then 98% effective against serious illness and death - are the cumulative. So out of 100000 people 2000 would get it and of them 40 would get seriously ill and Die?
No, they're not cumulative, and they're always in comparison to what happens without the vaccine.
So, if previously out of 100,000 people exposed to the virus, 90,000 got it, now 1,800 would get it.
If 10,000 out of those 100,000 got seriously ill, now it will be 200.
If 1,000 died, now 20 die.
@Gaussian Many Thanks. That makes sense - I heard someone saying that the figures must be wrong because it was more effective at stopping serious illness than death and that death is a pretty serious illness, but I realised I didn't know what they meant
How does that compare to the regular Flu? People die of the flu, and even suffer "Long Flu".... So does the vaccination reduce the dangers of COVID to that of Flu?
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.
Hmm, from reading what's available the original vaccine drive started in around February with a group of UK biotech companies getting together independently to support the development of the Oxford vaccine. I'm not sure how much of a factor air travel was. I think the government has always seen vaccines as the endgame state so would have done it regardless.
What's interesting is that the UK suffers from almost no vaccine hesitancy and that is in part due to the horrific death rates over the last year and the government linking unlockdown to vaccination. In a perverse way the high death toll may end up meaning a much faster and higher take up of vaccines by the general public. In SK there is much higher vaccine hesitancy, a lot of that is surely because they've not had the alternative of people dying in their thousands and hospitals being overwhelmed leading to indefinite lockdowns.
I think there might be some truth in that. I'm certainly surprised by the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in most of the Germans I know around here in Cologne.
But also look at the past record of vaccination - the UK normally vaccinates more than twice as many over 65s against flu as Germany does. And contributed far more to GAVI than other European countries already 10 years ago, so there's a whole bunch of factors probably.
While the EU vaccine procurement scheme has been crap, it doesn't seem to have been significantly worse than other continental western European countries (ie Switzerland and Norway). And not everything is seen through the lens of Brexit on the continent (I think it's probably true to say that nothing is except Brexit itself, which has barely made the news at all for about 3 years and was over a long time ago so far as most people are concerned), unlike on PB.com. In my entirely anecdotal experience, people are more likely to compare the slow vaccine rollout in Germany with the speed of Israel than with the UK.
Which is an odd one because Germany's second wave has been pretty horrific and I thought the lockdown had just been extended as well. One would hope that people see vaccines as the way out of this, lockdowns aren't an end state. I have to say the German media has had a really poor time of it on the AZ vaccine, it could lead to a prolonged lockdown because people are stupidly not taking it despite it being a really great vaccine. I really, really hope that the UK data coming out over the next few days will convince people to just get it done.
Yes, I can't think of any justification for using "anonymous sources" for claims that a vaccine doesn't work, those 2 newspapers should come clean and say who was spreading such rubbish, or apologise. The German vaccine agency hasn't helped by recommending AZ vaccine only for under 65s - maybe that will change now that more data is available.
The lockdown has just been relaxed, in the sense that in most states schools reopened today, with small groups, no mixing, and masks on all the time. And the second wave has been worse than the first, but still not as bad as many other places, and hospitals have never been close to being overwhelmed - Germany is still treating small numbers of patients from neighbours (as well as sending some equipment and doctors to Portugal).
But, yes lots of "hesitant" people are looking at what happens in Israel and the UK before being keen to take a vaccine. I know a few proper anti-vaxxers too - I don't think they will ever be convinced, on certain topics they are impervious to any contact with reality, though otherwise lovely people - but they are much smaller numbers.
I have no idea if this is true, but I read that the nonsense Handelsblatt report came from a source in the German Health Ministry, and possibly the Health Minister himself: which would explain why journalists were willing to take it at face value.
Surely such a senior politician would not lie about such an important point? Well, yes, he might, if he and his government were really embarrassed by the slow-roll out of the EU vaccine programme in Germany, and they wanted to divert attention.
Tut, tut, tut
In the UK those journos would have been fired a few days later.
What is your source that it was Spahn? (I would be very surprised)
It was some time ago (when the initial furore arose), and I believe - but I cannot prove it as I have forgotten the link - that it was in German media. Maybe the Spiegel?
Dunno. As you say there is reason to think this is untrue, as Spahn also distanced himself from the Handelsblatt claims a day or two later.
A very murky and damaging affair, anyroad. And not even an apology from the paper. Incredible.
I blame the journalists. An "anonymous source" could be literally anyone out to cause trouble, or indeed pure mathematical illiteracy from the journalists. I am no fan of the current German government, but I would be surprised if it was ever in any sense German policy (or a politician at the level of Spahn's wheeze) to try and discredit a vaccine they had ordered millions of doses of. I mean, it doesn't even make any sense on any level, if you think about it. How is that supposed to help anyone's reputation?
What the hell Macron was doing I have no idea, but probably somehow reflecting French anti-vax sentiment. Can't see it gaining him many votes though.
Wasn't the anonymous source described as someone high up in the ministry of health?
If a vaccine is 98% effective against illness and then 98% effective against serious illness and death - are the cumulative. So out of 100000 people 2000 would get it and of them 40 would get seriously ill and Die?
No, they're not cumulative, and they're always in comparison to what happens without the vaccine.
So, if previously out of 100,000 people exposed to the virus, 90,000 got it, now 1,800 would get it.
If 10,000 out of those 100,000 got seriously ill, now it will be 200.
If 1,000 died, now 20 die.
Except I think that deaths will be recorded as much higher than that as more people who have been vaccinated and are not ill nevertheless die with Covid within 28 days of a positive test. Indeed I frankly wonder if we will ever get deaths down to zero on such a basis.
Imagine complaining incessantly about covid and lockdown and then turning down the one thing that can make them go away. Christ...
I'm not sure we know their views on covid and lockdown. They could be worried about side effects or something.
My comment was intended to be general. Although I imagine @contrarian would also refuse the vaccine if offered. Happy for him to correct me though.
OK, it seemed as though you were referring to contrarian's family members, who (as far as I know) don't post here, so we don't know what their views are.
They don;'t but I am probably the moderate in all this.
Lets just say Bill Gates is not on wifey's christmas card list.
Nothing that a few well placed nanobots can't fix, I'm sure.
Indeed, Gates is just trying to help. He has no view of how people should live their lives whatsoever.
Well, apart from us all eating artificial meat, driving electric cars and putting up with f****** Edge on our computers, obvs.
For artificial meat and Edge there's only one appropriate response to Gates.
Yes - the people who have put themselves in charge of our lives have decided that they need to stay in charge because the vaccine is ONLY 90% effective. It's total lunacy. If a 63% drop on hospital admissions and massive reduction in spread amongst the vaccine hold out mongs was genuinely not enough, then it would become pretty clear that the lesser civil liberty restriction would be compulstory vaccination rather than compulsory house arrest. Either way you absolutely can vaccinate your way out of this and it is terrifying that people in charge are claiming otherwise.
Yes it is total lunacy. Compulsory near house arrest on everyone just because the Government won't face down the refuseniks. They don't even need to make vaccination compulsory. They just need to continue to enforce the tightest restrictions possible on those who refuse vaccinations while relaxing them for everyone else. Then those selfish refuseniks would be beating down the door of vaccination centres and rates would quickly reach 100%.
This is true. I'm not keen on vaccine passports, but as long it remains legal for private businesses to request evidence of vaccination, it will readily become the norm.
That will make for an uncomfortable summer. Oldies head off in droves to the pub while 20-30yr olds are stuck indoors waiting for their jab.
After having given up a year and a half of their lives for the benefit of the oldies.
Worst numbers since daily reported started 6 weeks ago:
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1363849005965443075 Clearly something is going on. Lack of supply? Stockpiling for 2nd doses? Both? The government must know that some serious supply is coming soon with the targets they have set.
That's terrible. I was concerned after the Welsh figure. Hmpft
It's been coming. I have been muttering about the trend for several days now. Some clarity as to supply would be helpful.
Speculation on Twitter that this is a shortage of AZ, which was expected - but which is also expected to be amended later in the week, then onwards.
Let's hope so. Because if we permanently slow down to jabbing 0.1% of the population a day, rather than 0.5%, we are in this shit til the Autumn
Worse still, we will reach a point where even the French can mock us.....
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends or relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Worst numbers since daily reported started 6 weeks ago:
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1363849005965443075 Clearly something is going on. Lack of supply? Stockpiling for 2nd doses? Both? The government must know that some serious supply is coming soon with the targets they have set.
That's terrible. I was concerned after the Welsh figure. Hmpft
It's been coming. I have been muttering about the trend for several days now. Some clarity as to supply would be helpful.
Speculation on Twitter that this is a shortage of AZ, which was expected - but which is also expected to be amended later in the week, then onwards.
Let's hope so. Because if we permanently slow down to jabbing 0.1% of the population a day, rather than 0.5%, we are in this shit til the Autumn
Worse still, we will reach a point where even the French can mock us.....
As @Northern_Al noted earlier, it is brave or foolish to pronounce conclusively on this at this stage.
Anyone who knows someone who is refusing to take the vaccine has a duty to very strongly encourage them to have it in my opinion. It is bordering on the grossly irresponsible not to have it when offered. But I still think it shouldnt be compulsory.
I agree it should not be compulsory but I have absolutely no problem with proof of vaccination being a necessary requirement for a very wide range of employments, basically anything that you come into contact with other members of the public doing.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
If only...
mRNA vaccines are used as the recipie for a cell to make proteins (in this case the Spike protein). Viruses do the same, by infecting a cell with its RNA*, which is then used to make viral proteins.
If Toby Young believes mRNA genetically alter people, then so does every human virus.
I suppose antivaxxers will be protected alongside Islamists and nazis when Toby is "Free Speech Champion"
*There are some DNA viruses too, but not coronavirus.
You can sort of understand the confusion, as retroviruses (of which the coronavirus isn't one), do use RNA to alter host DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The law is the law and all are equal before it.
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The problem is that it’s politically impossible to treat the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups differently, until the point at which everyone who wants a vaccine has been able to get one (or two).
Wasn't the anonymous source described as someone high up in the ministry of health?
The source was correct, though, in the sense of correctly quoting a figure in a health ministry document. The problem was that that figure was 100% meaningless.
Based on an IFR of 0.75% then I calculate that just over 17 million people in the UK have been infected with Covid. Roughly the same number have been vaccinated. I would love to be able to find a way to figure out what the overlap is because, if there is none, then about half the UK population may have antibodies.
The default assumption should be that they're independent variables. Assume 26% of the 26% are overlapping. This would give 45% (from three weeks from now. As of right now, and assuming we work on dose+21 days, we'd be looking at 37%)
That 37% could indeed explain some of the depression in R (partial population immunity). After all, herd immunity isn't a binary thing. To suppress spread with partial immunity of 0% takes more in the way of NPIs than to suppress it at 37%.
To be honest, that 37% could be what's making the difference with the new variant being more transmissible but we're still able to hold it down - they mutually cancel.
Thanks. I was talking to a doctor from the William Harvey Hospital that we walk dogs with and she was suggesting that Folkestone and Hythe District were approaching population immunity. I did the same calculation as before and, again based on a 0.75% IFR, 42% of that local government district have been infected at some point. Obviously I don't have the vaccination breakdown by LA. Based on what you say I really don't doubt that what you are saying is correct. Cases there have shown a 43% reduction in the last week.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The law is the law and all are equal before it.
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
I think they will hide behind “we don’t fully understand the impact on transmission” until such time as were basically done down to age 40.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The problem is that it’s politically impossible to treat the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups differently, until the point at which everyone who wants a vaccine has been able to get one (or two).
Well it ought to be possible to treat them differently, and I think it would have been possible to do so until about 20 years ago. Problem is people are more individualistic today than they used to be and dont like being told what to do when they know that other people are getting different advice. One of the downsides of the age we live in.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
No-one should be prohibited from meeting a group of friends in a few weeks time. We will all be in one of either safe from vaccination, low risk or chosen to not be vaccinated. In addition case rates will be low so chance of catching it very low anyway, and without the threat of our health service unable to cope.
We are paying yet again for the PMs blunders on timings in 2020, now he is being too cautious after being too slow and optimistic last year.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Any opponent of lockdown would be very silly to get caught up with anti vaxxers. The two are very different issues with very different arguments. Apart from the anti-vaxxers. Who have no arguments.
Different but quite an overlap on participants. Speaking of lockdown skeptics, what's your view on Nige's decision to go big into the anti-Chinese space? To me, it looks like a rare misstep from the arch populist. His USP is he has both golf club and dog track appeal and I reckon this just plays to the first. Will the Red Wallies be in a spin about the Chinese muscling in on Eton? I wouldn't have thought so.
There is some overlap with regard to lockdown skeptics and anti vaxxers to be sure. They both come from libertarian "wild west thinking" - keep the state out of my life and we`ll battle nature in our own way thank you. Extreme libertarians will also instinctively oppose state-sponsored things such as compulsory wearing of seat belts and fluoridation of water. They seek maximum negative liberty and self-reliance.
This libertarian mindset is not present in most people, like me, who argue that issues around liberty are not fully priced into government policy. But we get placed in the same box unfortunately.
Not by me, you don't. And the 3rd strand is covid denialism. Either that it's a hoax or it's a little sniffle. This is present to a significant degree in both the other 2 groups.
If being against compulsory seat belts and fluouridisation of water is an extreme libertarian position, call me an extreme libertarian. I had no idea this position was extreme.
I do find it inconvenient that covid denialists (it doesn't exist) get lumped together with lockdown sceptics (the disease exists, but the cure is worse or doesn't work or both).
I am an enthusiastic vaxxer though. Though I get very uncomfortable with compulsory vaccination or any sort of removal of liberty for those who haven't been vaccinated.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
If only...
mRNA vaccines are used as the recipie for a cell to make proteins (in this case the Spike protein). Viruses do the same, by infecting a cell with its RNA*, which is then used to make viral proteins.
If Toby Young believes mRNA genetically alter people, then so does every human virus.
I suppose antivaxxers will be protected alongside Islamists and nazis when Toby is "Free Speech Champion"
*There are some DNA viruses too, but not coronavirus.
Dr John Lee wrote in the Speccie that 40% of the human genome is incorporated virus material.
He's talking of retroviruses though. The way our genomes have incorporated and tamed them, over evolutionary time, is a very complicated and poorly understood (by me at least) subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Yes - the people who have put themselves in charge of our lives have decided that they need to stay in charge because the vaccine is ONLY 90% effective. It's total lunacy. If a 63% drop on hospital admissions and massive reduction in spread amongst the vaccine hold out mongs was genuinely not enough, then it would become pretty clear that the lesser civil liberty restriction would be compulstory vaccination rather than compulsory house arrest. Either way you absolutely can vaccinate your way out of this and it is terrifying that people in charge are claiming otherwise.
Yes it is total lunacy. Compulsory near house arrest on everyone just because the Government won't face down the refuseniks. They don't even need to make vaccination compulsory. They just need to continue to enforce the tightest restrictions possible on those who refuse vaccinations while relaxing them for everyone else. Then those selfish refuseniks would be beating down the door of vaccination centres and rates would quickly reach 100%.
This is true. I'm not keen on vaccine passports, but as long it remains legal for private businesses to request evidence of vaccination, it will readily become the norm.
That will make for an uncomfortable summer. Oldies head off in droves to the pub while 20-30yr olds are stuck indoors waiting for their jab.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The law is the law and all are equal before it.
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
Er, no. You need to have vaccinations to visit certain countries. You de facto disentitle yourself if you refuse. It is not draconian to refuse someone certain privileges if they do not follow straightforward public health guidelines that are there to protect others. No-one is forcing anyone to be vaccinated, and neither should they, but there is no harm in refusing them non essential services or privileges if they do not have adequate excuse.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
In a way, saying that vaccines are the way out is an admission that lockdown was never going to be a sustainable long term solution.
Lockdowns were never meant to be a sustainable long term solution. We all told you that, it was only you that believed this was for the long term. 🤦♂️
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
It means 20-30 year olds making their own informed decisions and taking their own choices once its legal to go out.
There is no excuse for restricting legal actions to vaccinated only prior to the vaccine being available to all.
We shall see. The government's behaviour to date wrt the virus doesn't give me hope that it will trust "20-30yr olds [to make] their own informed decisions". Or indeed anyone else.
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
There is no theory. It's just a series of grave missteps which they are now desperately trying to amend.
The theory I'm seeing - and am in the process of evaluating - is that a plan was hatched in the upper echelons of Brussels, Paris and Berlin, to smear the AZ vaccine with the objective of rendering it next to useless in the eyes of their vulnerable, locked down populations.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The law is the law and all are equal before it.
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
Why? What conceivable matter of principle applies here? Are you saying that at times when there has been months-long delays in getting a passport, those who could get a passport shouldn't be allowed to travel until the backlog has been eliminated?
The practical problems here are threefold:
- Enforcement - people who have been vaccinated will simply ignore restrictions on them which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to stay shut for yet more months, when there are plenty of people jabbed up and ready to spend
If a vaccine is 98% effective against illness and then 98% effective against serious illness and death - are the cumulative. So out of 100000 people 2000 would get it and of them 40 would get seriously ill and Die?
No, they're not cumulative, and they're always in comparison to what happens without the vaccine.
So, if previously out of 100,000 people exposed to the virus, 90,000 got it, now 1,800 would get it.
If 10,000 out of those 100,000 got seriously ill, now it will be 200.
If 1,000 died, now 20 die.
Except I think that deaths will be recorded as much higher than that as more people who have been vaccinated and are not ill nevertheless die with Covid within 28 days of a positive test. Indeed I frankly wonder if we will ever get deaths down to zero on such a basis.
True. Covid-related deaths could still go to near zero though if immunity got high enough for the virus to die out and to deny imported cases a foothold.
Wasn't the anonymous source described as someone high up in the ministry of health?
The source was correct, though, in the sense of correctly quoting a figure in a health ministry document. The problem was that that figure was 100% meaningless.
What's worse, the absurdity of the 8% figure was pointed out to the journalists, by lots of experts. However, instead of admitting error, the same hacks supposedly went back to the "senior official" at the "Ministry" who confirmed the 8% claim was true, not a misreading, and that AZ efficacy in the old was "under 10%"
They doubled down.
At the same time the journos refused to offer any evidence or proof, or name their source, citing confidentiality blah blah
Either the journalists told the most outrageous lies, out of fear for their jobs, or there was some kind of conspiracy in the "German Ministry" to smear AZ. Or both.
In Britain this would be a huge media scandal and heads would roll. Not in Berlin.
Based on an IFR of 0.75% then I calculate that just over 17 million people in the UK have been infected with Covid. Roughly the same number have been vaccinated. I would love to be able to find a way to figure out what the overlap is because, if there is none, then about half the UK population may have antibodies.
The default assumption should be that they're independent variables. Assume 26% of the 26% are overlapping. This would give 45% (from three weeks from now. As of right now, and assuming we work on dose+21 days, we'd be looking at 37%)
That 37% could indeed explain some of the depression in R (partial population immunity). After all, herd immunity isn't a binary thing. To suppress spread with partial immunity of 0% takes more in the way of NPIs than to suppress it at 37%.
To be honest, that 37% could be what's making the difference with the new variant being more transmissible but we're still able to hold it down - they mutually cancel.
Thanks. I was talking to a doctor from the William Harvey Hospital that we walk dogs with and she was suggesting that Folkestone and Hythe District were approaching population immunity. I did the same calculation as before and, again based on a 0.75% IFR, 42% of that local government district have been infected at some point. Obviously I don't have the vaccination breakdown by LA. Based on what you say I really don't doubt that what you are saying is correct. Cases there have shown a 43% reduction in the last week.
Presumably the IFR will be higher in Folkestone and Hythe because of all the old people. But on the other hand presumably that means F&H will be more vaccinated than most places.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
If only...
mRNA vaccines are used as the recipie for a cell to make proteins (in this case the Spike protein). Viruses do the same, by infecting a cell with its RNA*, which is then used to make viral proteins.
If Toby Young believes mRNA genetically alter people, then so does every human virus.
I suppose antivaxxers will be protected alongside Islamists and nazis when Toby is "Free Speech Champion"
*There are some DNA viruses too, but not coronavirus.
LOLs at Toby Young.
But, of course, viruses are one of the reasons higher life forms exist. They do transfer genetic material across species and significantly increase the rate of evolution as a consequence. But sequences for 20 or so of the 1200 or so peptides in the spike protein changing 'you', I don't think so.
"Our findings imply that horizontal transfer of double-stranded RNA viral genes is widespread among eukaryotes and may give rise to functionally important new genes, thus entailing that RNA viruses may play significant roles in the evolution of eukaryotes. ...
"Horizontal gene transfer (HGT)—the transfer of genes between distinct evolutionary lineages—has been recognized as a frequent event occurring from cells to viruses (7, 47, 48, 50) as well as from viruses to viruses (3, 25, 37, 50). Transfer from DNA viruses or retroviruses to eukaryotic cells has also been reported (4, 5, 14, 30, 41, 45). Transfer from nonretroviral RNA viruses to cells is thought to be extremely rare (5, 19)."
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
It means 20-30 year olds making their own informed decisions and taking their own choices once its legal to go out.
There is no excuse for restricting legal actions to vaccinated only prior to the vaccine being available to all.
We shall see. The government's behaviour to date wrt the virus doesn't give me hope that it will trust "20-30yr olds [to make] their own informed decisions". Or indeed anyone else.
Why not? That's what they've done throughout the pandemic. The law has been the law and people can make their own choices within the law.
Once its legal to go out its legal to go out for all, not just the vaccinated. Tell 20-30 year olds they can't go out until there's a vaccine and they can't have the vaccine as they don't need it yet then what do you think they're going to do? Its an unworkable system, never going to happen.
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.
Hmm, from reading what's available the original vaccine drive started in around February with a group of UK biotech companies getting together independently to support the development of the Oxford vaccine. I'm not sure how much of a factor air travel was. I think the government has always seen vaccines as the endgame state so would have done it regardless.
What's interesting is that the UK suffers from almost no vaccine hesitancy and that is in part due to the horrific death rates over the last year and the government linking unlockdown to vaccination. In a perverse way the high death toll may end up meaning a much faster and higher take up of vaccines by the general public. In SK there is much higher vaccine hesitancy, a lot of that is surely because they've not had the alternative of people dying in their thousands and hospitals being overwhelmed leading to indefinite lockdowns.
I think there might be some truth in that. I'm certainly surprised by the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in most of the Germans I know around here in Cologne.
But also look at the past record of vaccination - the UK normally vaccinates more than twice as many over 65s against flu as Germany does. And contributed far more to GAVI than other European countries already 10 years ago, so there's a whole bunch of factors probably.
While the EU vaccine procurement scheme has been crap, it doesn't seem to have been significantly worse than other continental western European countries (ie Switzerland and Norway). And not everything is seen through the lens of Brexit on the continent (I think it's probably true to say that nothing is except Brexit itself, which has barely made the news at all for about 3 years and was over a long time ago so far as most people are concerned), unlike on PB.com. In my entirely anecdotal experience, people are more likely to compare the slow vaccine rollout in Germany with the speed of Israel than with the UK.
Which is an odd one because Germany's second wave has been pretty horrific and I thought the lockdown had just been extended as well. One would hope that people see vaccines as the way out of this, lockdowns aren't an end state. I have to say the German media has had a really poor time of it on the AZ vaccine, it could lead to a prolonged lockdown because people are stupidly not taking it despite it being a really great vaccine. I really, really hope that the UK data coming out over the next few days will convince people to just get it done.
Yes, I can't think of any justification for using "anonymous sources" for claims that a vaccine doesn't work, those 2 newspapers should come clean and say who was spreading such rubbish, or apologise. The German vaccine agency hasn't helped by recommending AZ vaccine only for under 65s - maybe that will change now that more data is available.
The lockdown has just been relaxed, in the sense that in most states schools reopened today, with small groups, no mixing, and masks on all the time. And the second wave has been worse than the first, but still not as bad as many other places, and hospitals have never been close to being overwhelmed - Germany is still treating small numbers of patients from neighbours (as well as sending some equipment and doctors to Portugal).
But, yes lots of "hesitant" people are looking at what happens in Israel and the UK before being keen to take a vaccine. I know a few proper anti-vaxxers too - I don't think they will ever be convinced, on certain topics they are impervious to any contact with reality, though otherwise lovely people - but they are much smaller numbers.
I have no idea if this is true, but I read that the nonsense Handelsblatt report came from a source in the German Health Ministry, and possibly the Health Minister himself: which would explain why journalists were willing to take it at face value.
Surely such a senior politician would not lie about such an important point? Well, yes, he might, if he and his government were really embarrassed by the slow-roll out of the EU vaccine programme in Germany, and they wanted to divert attention.
Tut, tut, tut
In the UK those journos would have been fired a few days later.
What is your source that it was Spahn? (I would be very surprised)
It was some time ago (when the initial furore arose), and I believe - but I cannot prove it as I have forgotten the link - that it was in German media. Maybe the Spiegel?
Dunno. As you say there is reason to think this is untrue, as Spahn also distanced himself from the Handelsblatt claims a day or two later.
A very murky and damaging affair, anyroad. And not even an apology from the paper. Incredible.
I blame the journalists. An "anonymous source" could be literally anyone out to cause trouble, or indeed pure mathematical illiteracy from the journalists. I am no fan of the current German government, but I would be surprised if it was ever in any sense German policy (or a politician at the level of Spahn's wheeze) to try and discredit a vaccine they had ordered millions of doses of. I mean, it doesn't even make any sense on any level, if you think about it. How is that supposed to help anyone's reputation?
What the hell Macron was doing I have no idea, but probably somehow reflecting French anti-vax sentiment. Can't see it gaining him many votes though.
Wasn't the anonymous source described as someone high up in the ministry of health?
Worst numbers since daily reported started 6 weeks ago:
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1363849005965443075 Clearly something is going on. Lack of supply? Stockpiling for 2nd doses? Both? The government must know that some serious supply is coming soon with the targets they have set.
That's terrible. I was concerned after the Welsh figure. Hmpft
It's been coming. I have been muttering about the trend for several days now. Some clarity as to supply would be helpful.
Speculation on Twitter that this is a shortage of AZ, which was expected - but which is also expected to be amended later in the week, then onwards.
Let's hope so. Because if we permanently slow down to jabbing 0.1% of the population a day, rather than 0.5%, we are in this shit til the Autumn
Worse still, we will reach a point where even the French can mock us.....
As @Northern_Al noted earlier, it is brave or foolish to pronounce conclusively on this at this stage.
As I said earlier in the thread, my wife and I have been called in on the 7th March for our second Pfizer dose, six weeks after the first
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
How did Toby Young ever get accepted into the University of Oxford?
Bit of 'Dad'll fix it', is what I heard.
Still, I'm sure he would have thrived at Exeter.
To think that, but for the intervention of a nepotistic Labour peer, we might never have heard of Toby Young...
Well there is no-one - no-one - with more impeccable credentials than me for pointing out the damage done to our society by allowing affluent, well-connected parents to nail down superior opportunities for their offspring.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The law is the law and all are equal before it.
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
Why? What conceivable matter of principle applies here? Are you saying that at times when there has been months-long delays in getting a passport, those who could get a passport shouldn't be allowed to travel until the backlog has been eliminated?
The practical problems here are threefold:
- Enforcement - people who have been vaccinated will simply ignore restrictions on them which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to stay shut for yet more months, when there are plenty of people jabbed up and ready to spend
- Vaccine hesitancy
No the alternative is to open up to all, not just the vaccinated. Let the unvaccinated take their own risks if they want to do so.
- Enforcement - people who are not able to get a vaccine because they don't medically need it very much will simply ignore restrictions on them that are not applied to others which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to only have a tiny clientelle, when there are plenty of people who want to be jabbed but can't be but aren't medically at much risk anyway and are willing to take the chance and go out.
- Vaccine hesitancy - people have right to choose. Or if they don't change the law, but that's not the law.
There's no possible justification for telling a healthy 20something or 30something they're not much at risk of the virus, but they need to stay at home to protect their elders, but their elders are vaccinated, so their elders can go out - but they still need to stay at home. Why are they staying at home if not to protect their elders who are going out?
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
There is no theory. It's just a series of grave missteps which they are now desperately trying to amend.
The theory I'm seeing - and am in the process of evaluating - is that a plan was hatched in the upper echelons of Brussels, Paris and Berlin, to smear the AZ vaccine with the objective of rendering it next to useless in the eyes of their vulnerable, locked down populations.
That's a MASSIVE allegation.
99.99% of the time its cockup rather than conspiracy.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
There is no theory. It's just a series of grave missteps which they are now desperately trying to amend.
The theory I'm seeing - and am in the process of evaluating - is that a plan was hatched in the upper echelons of Brussels, Paris and Berlin, to smear the AZ vaccine with the objective of rendering it next to useless in the eyes of their vulnerable, locked down populations.
That's a MASSIVE allegation.
Not a plan. It was just done. I don't think it was planned through, it was simply lashing out as part of damage control from their last screw up without thinking through what they were doing.
Based on an IFR of 0.75% then I calculate that just over 17 million people in the UK have been infected with Covid. Roughly the same number have been vaccinated. I would love to be able to find a way to figure out what the overlap is because, if there is none, then about half the UK population may have antibodies.
The default assumption should be that they're independent variables. Assume 26% of the 26% are overlapping. This would give 45% (from three weeks from now. As of right now, and assuming we work on dose+21 days, we'd be looking at 37%)
That 37% could indeed explain some of the depression in R (partial population immunity). After all, herd immunity isn't a binary thing. To suppress spread with partial immunity of 0% takes more in the way of NPIs than to suppress it at 37%.
To be honest, that 37% could be what's making the difference with the new variant being more transmissible but we're still able to hold it down - they mutually cancel.
Thanks. I was talking to a doctor from the William Harvey Hospital that we walk dogs with and she was suggesting that Folkestone and Hythe District were approaching population immunity. I did the same calculation as before and, again based on a 0.75% IFR, 42% of that local government district have been infected at some point. Obviously I don't have the vaccination breakdown by LA. Based on what you say I really don't doubt that what you are saying is correct. Cases there have shown a 43% reduction in the last week.
Presumably the IFR will be higher in Folkestone and Hythe because of all the old people. But on the other hand presumably that means F&H will be more vaccinated than most places.
Yes - I think it has an older age demographic than the Kent average. My slightly morbid facination with this has led me to estimate that 30% of Kent overall have had it.
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
There is no theory. It's just a series of grave missteps which they are now desperately trying to amend.
The theory I'm seeing - and am in the process of evaluating - is that a plan was hatched in the upper echelons of Brussels, Paris and Berlin, to smear the AZ vaccine with the objective of rendering it next to useless in the eyes of their vulnerable, locked down populations.
That's a MASSIVE allegation.
Well, there is evidence for that
"Early results from AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine appear to show it is ineffective for people over 65 years of age, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.
Macron said there was "very little information" available for the vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company and Oxford University.
"Today we think that it is quasi-ineffective for people over 65," he told the reporters, his office confirmed to AFP.
"What I can tell you officially today is that the early results we have are not encouraging for 60 to 65-year-old people concerning AstraZeneca," he said.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
Specifically, it changes you from a person with no immunity to covid to a person with a high level of immunity to covid.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
If only...
mRNA vaccines are used as the recipie for a cell to make proteins (in this case the Spike protein). Viruses do the same, by infecting a cell with its RNA*, which is then used to make viral proteins.
If Toby Young believes mRNA genetically alter people, then so does every human virus.
I suppose antivaxxers will be protected alongside Islamists and nazis when Toby is "Free Speech Champion"
*There are some DNA viruses too, but not coronavirus.
You can sort of understand the confusion, as retroviruses (of which the coronavirus isn't one), do use RNA to alter host DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus
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.
Hmm, from reading what's available the original vaccine drive started in around February with a group of UK biotech companies getting together independently to support the development of the Oxford vaccine. I'm not sure how much of a factor air travel was. I think the government has always seen vaccines as the endgame state so would have done it regardless.
What's interesting is that the UK suffers from almost no vaccine hesitancy and that is in part due to the horrific death rates over the last year and the government linking unlockdown to vaccination. In a perverse way the high death toll may end up meaning a much faster and higher take up of vaccines by the general public. In SK there is much higher vaccine hesitancy, a lot of that is surely because they've not had the alternative of people dying in their thousands and hospitals being overwhelmed leading to indefinite lockdowns.
I think there might be some truth in that. I'm certainly surprised by the prevalence of vaccine hesitancy in most of the Germans I know around here in Cologne.
But also look at the past record of vaccination - the UK normally vaccinates more than twice as many over 65s against flu as Germany does. And contributed far more to GAVI than other European countries already 10 years ago, so there's a whole bunch of factors probably.
While the EU vaccine procurement scheme has been crap, it doesn't seem to have been significantly worse than other continental western European countries (ie Switzerland and Norway). And not everything is seen through the lens of Brexit on the continent (I think it's probably true to say that nothing is except Brexit itself, which has barely made the news at all for about 3 years and was over a long time ago so far as most people are concerned), unlike on PB.com. In my entirely anecdotal experience, people are more likely to compare the slow vaccine rollout in Germany with the speed of Israel than with the UK.
Which is an odd one because Germany's second wave has been pretty horrific and I thought the lockdown had just been extended as well. One would hope that people see vaccines as the way out of this, lockdowns aren't an end state. I have to say the German media has had a really poor time of it on the AZ vaccine, it could lead to a prolonged lockdown because people are stupidly not taking it despite it being a really great vaccine. I really, really hope that the UK data coming out over the next few days will convince people to just get it done.
Yes, I can't think of any justification for using "anonymous sources" for claims that a vaccine doesn't work, those 2 newspapers should come clean and say who was spreading such rubbish, or apologise. The German vaccine agency hasn't helped by recommending AZ vaccine only for under 65s - maybe that will change now that more data is available.
The lockdown has just been relaxed, in the sense that in most states schools reopened today, with small groups, no mixing, and masks on all the time. And the second wave has been worse than the first, but still not as bad as many other places, and hospitals have never been close to being overwhelmed - Germany is still treating small numbers of patients from neighbours (as well as sending some equipment and doctors to Portugal).
But, yes lots of "hesitant" people are looking at what happens in Israel and the UK before being keen to take a vaccine. I know a few proper anti-vaxxers too - I don't think they will ever be convinced, on certain topics they are impervious to any contact with reality, though otherwise lovely people - but they are much smaller numbers.
I have no idea if this is true, but I read that the nonsense Handelsblatt report came from a source in the German Health Ministry, and possibly the Health Minister himself: which would explain why journalists were willing to take it at face value.
Surely such a senior politician would not lie about such an important point? Well, yes, he might, if he and his government were really embarrassed by the slow-roll out of the EU vaccine programme in Germany, and they wanted to divert attention.
Tut, tut, tut
In the UK those journos would have been fired a few days later.
What is your source that it was Spahn? (I would be very surprised)
It was some time ago (when the initial furore arose), and I believe - but I cannot prove it as I have forgotten the link - that it was in German media. Maybe the Spiegel?
Dunno. As you say there is reason to think this is untrue, as Spahn also distanced himself from the Handelsblatt claims a day or two later.
A very murky and damaging affair, anyroad. And not even an apology from the paper. Incredible.
I blame the journalists. An "anonymous source" could be literally anyone out to cause trouble, or indeed pure mathematical illiteracy from the journalists. I am no fan of the current German government, but I would be surprised if it was ever in any sense German policy (or a politician at the level of Spahn's wheeze) to try and discredit a vaccine they had ordered millions of doses of. I mean, it doesn't even make any sense on any level, if you think about it. How is that supposed to help anyone's reputation?
What the hell Macron was doing I have no idea, but probably somehow reflecting French anti-vax sentiment. Can't see it gaining him many votes though.
Wasn't the anonymous source described as someone high up in the ministry of health?
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
They didn't think.
They lashed out trying to get the vaccine as they were desperate to get it.
When that failed they were humiliated and lashed out discrediting it so it didn't seem such a big deal they didn't have it.
Once in a hole, stop digging.
You need to be careful on the language front. It's just about ok here, and you're helped by having a point, but it's on the verge of tipping into quite open and visceral europhobia.
Also I can't quite recall - did you purchase the integrity needed for making these charges against the EU by retro condemning Johnson for his lives-costing mishandling of the lives-costing Cummings scandal?
No the alternative is to open up to all, not just the vaccinated. Let the unvaccinated take their own risks if they want to do so.
- Enforcement - people who are not able to get a vaccine because they don't medically need it very much will simply ignore restrictions on them that are not applied to others which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to only have a tiny clientelle, when there are plenty of people who want to be jabbed but can't be but aren't medically at much risk anyway and are willing to take the chance and go out.
- Vaccine hesitancy - people have right to choose. Or if they don't change the law, but that's not the law.
There's no possible justification for telling a healthy 20something or 30something they're not much at risk of the virus, but they need to stay at home to protect their elders, but their elders are vaccinated, so their elders can go out - but they still need to stay at home. Why are they staying at home if not to protect their elders who are going out?
In the timescale I'm talking about, the principal people being protected by remaining restrictions will be the young and young-ish. The restrictions won't be necessary to protect the oldies, it will be to protect the unvaccinated from long Covid and the smaller, but non-zero, risk of hospitalisation. And it's almost certainly the case that the vaccinated people will also be massively less risky in terms of spreading the virus.
Edit: Of course you are right that there may well be a period, later in the year, when it's OK to end all restrictions even before everyone has been jabbed (whilst still encouraging them to get jabbed as soon as they can). That's public-health decision, though.
The whole point of Millenials and younger staying at home for the past year was to protect those older than us who were at risk. Not to protect ourselves.
If our elders are vaccinated, if pubs and restaurants are open, then there's no justification to tell us its illegal to go out without a vaccine we can't get. If its legal to go out, I'm going out and I'll be damned if anyone tells me otherwise if its legal. Same with anyone else my age I'm sure. Why the hell should we rot at home for a day more than we need to once that's no longer the law?
If pubs and restaurants are open, they're open. I'm prepared to take my chances, I stayed at home to protect those older than me that were at risk not for myself.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
They didn't think.
They lashed out trying to get the vaccine as they were desperate to get it.
When that failed they were humiliated and lashed out discrediting it so it didn't seem such a big deal they didn't have it.
Once in a hole, stop digging.
You need to be careful on the language front. It's just about ok here, and you're helped by having a point, but it's on the verge of tipping into quite open and visceral europhobia.
Also I can't quite recall - did you purchase the integrity needed for making these charges against the EU by retro condemning Johnson for his lives-costing mishandling of the lives-costing Cummings scandal?
If you did, fine. But I can't remember.
Its not Europhobia, its specific to the politicians concerned. That's Macron, Merkel and a few others especially. They're not all tainted by the same brush.
I've praised Ireland. The Irish response was "the best vaccine is the one available to you today". That was very well put and should have been the response other countries had. Blaming people isn't blaming the institution - this was not an institutional failure it was a personal one by the people who screwed up.
The Cummings "scandal" didn't cost lives. So no, it was much ado about nothing and remotely comparing it with fuelling antivax conspiracies is patent codswallop.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
If only...
mRNA vaccines are used as the recipie for a cell to make proteins (in this case the Spike protein). Viruses do the same, by infecting a cell with its RNA*, which is then used to make viral proteins.
If Toby Young believes mRNA genetically alter people, then so does every human virus.
I suppose antivaxxers will be protected alongside Islamists and nazis when Toby is "Free Speech Champion"
*There are some DNA viruses too, but not coronavirus.
You can sort of understand the confusion, as retroviruses (of which the coronavirus isn't one), do use RNA to alter host DNA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus
So mRNA vaccines are safer, as there is no reverse Transcriptase.
As mRNA is a part of viral replication, it is hard to object to mRNA vaccines. They just cut out the middlemen.
And mRNAs are involved in making proteins, not genetic material. So all the mRNA can result in is viral protein production, not virus production, or genetic alteration of the host.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
In a way, saying that vaccines are the way out is an admission that lockdown was never going to be a sustainable long term solution.
Ffs, no one ever has said lockdown is the long term solution!
Which makes the turning up of vaccines, normally years in development, all the more wonderful.
Without them, the government would have faced an eternal lockdown until a kind of social and economic collapse took place.
If vaccine development was expected to take 10 years we would have needed a different approach with less lockdown measures, and accepted more deaths. Expectation was 1-2 years and it came in just under 1 year, of course thats wonderful but if it had been 2 years the lockdown policy would still have been broadly the right one.
I will turn into a lockdown sceptic myself sometime in March, it is not necessary once the threat to the health service is removed.
That seems like a very low number in terms of total vaccinations. Run out of supply?
Is it possible that the government is starting to run out of road in terms of the number of people who really, really want a vaccine?
QTWAIN.
Its still all about supply. There's many tens of millions eager for their first dose, and well over ten million eager for their second.
No matter how hard Toby and the Lockdown Sceptics try to stoke up antivax sentiments. He’s got a catchy song today, to push the claim that mRNA vaccines rewrite your genes and make you a different person. Here’s where someone will pop up and say he doesn’t believe this and he’s just doing it to continue getting donations. What a contemptible worm he is.
Toby Young.
The vaccine "makes you a different person."
Hmm.
How did Toby Young ever get accepted into the University of Oxford?
Bit of 'Dad'll fix it', is what I heard.
Still, I'm sure he would have thrived at Exeter.
To think that, but for the intervention of a nepotistic Labour peer, we might never have heard of Toby Young...
Well there is no-one - no-one - with more impeccable credentials than me for pointing out the damage done to our society by allowing affluent, well-connected parents to nail down superior opportunities for their offspring.
Ah, but this case illustrates to perfection how universal and irrepressible the will to pass down such superior opportunities is. Michael Young wrote the 1945 Labour manifesto and literally coined the term 'meritocracy', but when it came down to his son and his place at Oxford, merit and social justice and egalitarianism could all go hang. He is the prince and avatar of all lefty hypocrites.
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
There is no theory. It's just a series of grave missteps which they are now desperately trying to amend.
The theory I'm seeing - and am in the process of evaluating - is that a plan was hatched in the upper echelons of Brussels, Paris and Berlin, to smear the AZ vaccine with the objective of rendering it next to useless in the eyes of their vulnerable, locked down populations.
That's a MASSIVE allegation.
Not a plan. It was just done. I don't think it was planned through, it was simply lashing out as part of damage control from their last screw up without thinking through what they were doing.
Cockup not conspiracy.
They were using the next screw up to distract attention from the previous screw up. President Toyboy has always looked and sounded like a prat, so it was slightly gratifying when he actually behaved in a way consistent with this initial impression.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
It would be political suicide to admit it, but I do think that the current state of play does indicate that the government anticipates a controlled spread of the virus accross the country. There was a quote from a SAGE member in the FT the other week suggesting that discussion around a "big wave" of infections was about to happen- ("There will be a massive debate about whether we should allow a big wave of infection once we've vaccinated all the over 50s...Are we going to aim for low prevalence or accept high prevalence for a period?") The roadmap suggests that controlling infection and keeping R below 1 isn't everything anymore - such rates are only a problem if they risk a surge in hospital admissions. No-one is ever, ever, going to come out and say it but it does seem that, to an extent, that the Herd Immunity strategy that Imperial shot down last 16 March may be back in a more controlled way. And given we are over a third of the way to their predicted deaths without NPI's anyway...
Another anecdote from a work colleague, friend of his ironman triathlete completely floored by the virus and still not right after it.
Elite athletes are generally more susceptible to illnesses not less. I'd imagine its the same for an ironman competitor at any level, that much stress on the body is not good for your immune system even if it makes you very fit.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
In a way, saying that vaccines are the way out is an admission that lockdown was never going to be a sustainable long term solution.
Ffs, no one ever has said lockdown is the long term solution!
Which makes the turning up of vaccines, normally years in development, all the more wonderful.
Without them, the government would have faced an eternal lockdown until a kind of social and economic collapse took place.
If vaccine development was expected to take 10 years we would have needed a different approach with less lockdown measures, and accepted more deaths. Expectation was 1-2 years and it came in just under 1 year, of course thats wonderful but if it had been 2 years the lockdown policy would still have been broadly the right one.
I will turn into a lockdown sceptic myself sometime in March, it is not necessary once the threat to the health service is removed.
I suspect you will be far from alone. I posted on here on the week-end that frustration is growing, Even tory cuddle bunny Timmy Montgomerie thinks Johnson is being much too timid.
Another anecdote from a work colleague, friend of his ironman triathlete completely floored by the virus and still not right after it.
Elite athletes are generally more susceptible to illnesses not less. I'd imagine its the same for an ironman competitor at any level, that much stress on the body is not good for your immune system even if it makes you very fit.
The very fittest in my running club both got off very lightly, both sub 20 5kers. I wonder if the optimal recipe is to be very fit but not push it too much till you are T+21 days after vaccination... Bit annoying for the 95+% less genetically gifted mind.
"Italy's ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo has been killed in an attack in the east of the country, its foreign ministry has said.
Luca Attanasio, 43, died in hospital on Monday after the United Nations convoy he was travelling in came under fire near Goma, a statement said. The convoy reportedly belonged to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP)."
Just managed to keep one of the 'BT Technican' scammers busy on my line for 7 minutes without giving him any information, simply by playing dumb and for time. A sort of public service I guess!
Because Germany has completely fucked up the publicity around the Oxford-AZ vaccine, by smearing it as useless, via absurdly fake news stories sourced from embarrassed politicians, they are now having to do an official news campaign to persuade Germans that, no, honestly, it is really safe and effective, after all.
What's the theory then?
That they didn't think the smear campaign would work - and now it has they are trying to undo it?
They didn't think.
They lashed out trying to get the vaccine as they were desperate to get it.
When that failed they were humiliated and lashed out discrediting it so it didn't seem such a big deal they didn't have it.
Once in a hole, stop digging.
You need to be careful on the language front. It's just about ok here, and you're helped by having a point, but it's on the verge of tipping into quite open and visceral europhobia.
Also I can't quite recall - did you purchase the integrity needed for making these charges against the EU by retro condemning Johnson for his lives-costing mishandling of the lives-costing Cummings scandal?
If you did, fine. But I can't remember.
Its not Europhobia, its specific to the politicians concerned. That's Macron, Merkel and a few others especially. They're not all tainted by the same brush.
I've praised Ireland. The Irish response was "the best vaccine is the one available to you today". That was very well put and should have been the response other countries had. Blaming people isn't blaming the institution - this was not an institutional failure it was a personal one by the people who screwed up.
The Cummings "scandal" didn't cost lives. So no, it was much ado about nothing and remotely comparing it with fuelling antivax conspiracies is patent codswallop.
So you didn't reclaim your integrity then and do not wish to do so now. Fair enough. Free country. But this means all your posts attacking the EU on vaccines are fish & chip paper. What a shame. There have been so many too and they weren't all devoid of merit.
Let me know if you change your mind.
On the europhobia, as I say, it's just on the right side of the line atm but it is in the danger zone. I sense "frogs" and "krauts" are not far away. But of course it would be unfair to condemn something before you've done it. I am, though, preparing to condemn. Which is in itself a serious thing.
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
Yes. Either the vaccine is our route out or it is not.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
In a way, saying that vaccines are the way out is an admission that lockdown was never going to be a sustainable long term solution.
Ffs, no one ever has said lockdown is the long term solution!
Watering one's garden in high summer is an admission that gazing into endless blue skies in the hope of rain is not a long-term solution.
Or that you are one of those people who thought to fit a water-butt or five.
Talking of which, I have such plans afoot. I want a good sized water-butt that I can draw water from easily for the plans, ideally under such pressure that it will drive a hose. Do such products even exist? Do the PB Gardeners have any recommendations?
The whole point of Millenials and younger staying at home for the past year was to protect those older than us who were at risk. Not to protect ourselves.
If our elders are vaccinated, if pubs and restaurants are open, then there's no justification to tell us its illegal to go out without a vaccine we can't get. If its legal to go out, I'm going out and I'll be damned if anyone tells me otherwise if its legal. Same with anyone else my age I'm sure. Why the hell should we rot at home for a day more than we need to once that's no longer the law?
If pubs and restaurants are open, they're open. I'm prepared to take my chances, I stayed at home to protect those older than me that were at risk not for myself.
Philip I agree with you 100%. It's just that the government has not distinguished itself with such decisions. We have had government by Chief Medical Officer, for better or worse, for the past year. Do you think the CMO will be happy to let unvaccinated people go and mix with everyone else?
And if you have a scintilla of concern that he may not, dare I say welcome to the world of for example @contrarian and, to a lesser degree, of me.
I sincerely hope they follow your well-reasoned logic.
No the alternative is to open up to all, not just the vaccinated. Let the unvaccinated take their own risks if they want to do so.
- Enforcement - people who are not able to get a vaccine because they don't medically need it very much will simply ignore restrictions on them that are not applied to others which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to only have a tiny clientelle, when there are plenty of people who want to be jabbed but can't be but aren't medically at much risk anyway and are willing to take the chance and go out.
- Vaccine hesitancy - people have right to choose. Or if they don't change the law, but that's not the law.
There's no possible justification for telling a healthy 20something or 30something they're not much at risk of the virus, but they need to stay at home to protect their elders, but their elders are vaccinated, so their elders can go out - but they still need to stay at home. Why are they staying at home if not to protect their elders who are going out?
In the timescale I'm talking about, the principal people being protected by remaining restrictions will be the young and young-ish. The restrictions won't be necessary to protect the oldies, it will be to protect the unvaccinated from long Covid and the smaller, but non-zero, risk of hospitalisation. And it's almost certainly the case that the vaccinated people will also be massively less risky in terms of spreading the virus.
Edit: Of course you are right that there may well be a period, later in the year, when it's OK to end all restrictions even before everyone has been jabbed (whilst still encouraging them to get jabbed as soon as they can). That's public-health decision, though.
No. The restrictions aren't "necessary" to protect us from long Covid. Education is. If some of us take chances and catch long Covid so be it, life isn't risk free.
Warn people about the dangers of long Covid and then let us decide. If I'm not at risk of passing it to what we used to call the vulnerable (since they're vaccinated and out and about in your scenario) then how is it possible to justify keeping us locked out of society?
Looking ahead a few weeks, I don't see how it is going to be sustainable for the government to prohibit a group of friends of relatives, all of whom have been fully vaccinated, from meeting up outdoors or indoors. It seems to be that the government is blundering into a major misstep because it doesn't want to acknowledge that it is not rational to impose the same restrictions on the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. Quite apart from anything else, it's not helpful to the goal of encouraging take-up of the vaccines.
The law is the law and all are equal before it.
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
Why? What conceivable matter of principle applies here? Are you saying that at times when there has been months-long delays in getting a passport, those who could get a passport shouldn't be allowed to travel until the backlog has been eliminated?
The practical problems here are threefold:
- Enforcement - people who have been vaccinated will simply ignore restrictions on them which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to stay shut for yet more months, when there are plenty of people jabbed up and ready to spend
- Vaccine hesitancy
My experience (and this is of neighbours and villagers who were strongly pro-lockdown before) is that they apply different rules to their nearest and dearest once they've all been vaccinated.
The Government risks having a real problem with this - and it can't Gestapo its way out of it - so it'll be better to shape it.
The aircraft industry seems to be experiencing more problems over the last 5 years than in the previous 40 put together. I wonder why. Well, we know overconfidence in software systems is one of the reasons with regard to the 737 Max.
It would be political suicide to admit it, but I do think that the current state of play does indicate that the government anticipates a controlled spread of the virus accross the country. There was a quote from a SAGE member in the FT the other week suggesting that discussion around a "big wave" of infections was about to happen- ("There will be a massive debate about whether we should allow a big wave of infection once we've vaccinated all the over 50s...Are we going to aim for low prevalence or accept high prevalence for a period?") The roadmap suggests that controlling infection and keeping R below 1 isn't everything anymore - such rates are only a problem if they risk a surge in hospital admissions. No-one is ever, ever, going to come out and say it but it does seem that, to an extent, that the Herd Immunity strategy that Imperial shot down last 16 March may be back in a more controlled way. And given we are over a third of the way to their predicted deaths without NPI's anyway...
Comments
Let's hope so. Because if we permanently slow down to jabbing 0.1% of the population a day, rather than 0.5%, we are in this shit til the Autumn
Our health service has to perform all kinds of treatments because of their gross negligence, resources that could be used to Save Lives.
People are literally fattening their fellow Britons to death. There is blood on their bellies.
And that's vaccines.
Can anyone identify the location?
What the hell Macron was doing I have no idea, but probably somehow reflecting French anti-vax sentiment. Can't see it gaining him many votes though.
South Park rather than Simpsons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfsr8BBdA8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrovirus
There are various forms of RNA, of which messenger RNA is only one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messenger_RNA
If its legal for the vaccinated to do an action it absolutely should be legal for those who haven't had the offer of a vaccine to take the same action.
But as I noted earlier, this means 20-30yr olds stuck at home while the oldies go out to party.
Either that or accept that the risk to 20-30yr olds is far lower than for the oldies and let them party anyway. But that would bring us back to the segmentation theory we discussed here on PB many moons ago.
Meanwhile we hear all the time about this sports star or athlete testing positive for Covid. I was idly wondering how many athletes had died as a result of Covid. Perhaps someone could help me.
All I found was this - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/covid-19-is-no-big-deal-in-the-sports-world.html
We are paying yet again for the PMs blunders on timings in 2020, now he is being too cautious after being too slow and optimistic last year.
I do find it inconvenient that covid denialists (it doesn't exist) get lumped together with lockdown sceptics (the disease exists, but the cure is worse or doesn't work or both).
I am an enthusiastic vaxxer though. Though I get very uncomfortable with compulsory vaccination or any sort of removal of liberty for those who haven't been vaccinated.
The way our genomes have incorporated and tamed them, over evolutionary time, is a very complicated and poorly understood (by me at least) subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrotransposon
Nowt to do with coronaviruses.
It means 20-30 year olds making their own informed decisions and taking their own choices once its legal to go out.
There is no excuse for restricting legal actions to vaccinated only prior to the vaccine being available to all.
The segmentation theory was unworkable claptrap. Vaccinations are not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH1XeEx1b1I
https://twitter.com/tom_watson/status/1363416777225625605
https://twitter.com/DrRobertZands/status/1363417407897952261
That's a MASSIVE allegation.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nigeria-wetmarkets-idUSKCN25G0PE
The practical problems here are threefold:
- Enforcement - people who have been vaccinated will simply ignore restrictions on them which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to stay shut for yet more months, when there are plenty of people jabbed up and ready to spend
- Vaccine hesitancy
They doubled down.
At the same time the journos refused to offer any evidence or proof, or name their source, citing confidentiality blah blah
Either the journalists told the most outrageous lies, out of fear for their jobs, or there was some kind of conspiracy in the "German Ministry" to smear AZ. Or both.
In Britain this would be a huge media scandal and heads would roll. Not in Berlin.
But, of course, viruses are one of the reasons higher life forms exist. They do transfer genetic material across species and significantly increase the rate of evolution as a consequence. But sequences for 20 or so of the 1200 or so peptides in the spike protein changing 'you', I don't think so.
"Our findings imply that horizontal transfer of double-stranded RNA viral genes is widespread among eukaryotes and may give rise to functionally important new genes, thus entailing that RNA viruses may play significant roles in the evolution of eukaryotes. ...
"Horizontal gene transfer (HGT)—the transfer of genes between distinct evolutionary lineages—has been recognized as a frequent event occurring from cells to viruses (7, 47, 48, 50) as well as from viruses to viruses (3, 25, 37, 50). Transfer from DNA viruses or retroviruses to eukaryotic cells has also been reported (4, 5, 14, 30, 41, 45). Transfer from nonretroviral RNA viruses to cells is thought to be extremely rare (5, 19)."
https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/22/11876
Once its legal to go out its legal to go out for all, not just the vaccinated. Tell 20-30 year olds they can't go out until there's a vaccine and they can't have the vaccine as they don't need it yet then what do you think they're going to do? Its an unworkable system, never going to happen.
https://goo.gl/maps/4E1g42htT1V41J3m8
- Enforcement - people who are not able to get a vaccine because they don't medically need it very much will simply ignore restrictions on them that are not applied to others which are clearly irrational;
- Economic: you are condemning restaurants, theatres etc to only have a tiny clientelle, when there are plenty of people who want to be jabbed but can't be but aren't medically at much risk anyway and are willing to take the chance and go out.
- Vaccine hesitancy - people have right to choose. Or if they don't change the law, but that's not the law.
There's no possible justification for telling a healthy 20something or 30something they're not much at risk of the virus, but they need to stay at home to protect their elders, but their elders are vaccinated, so their elders can go out - but they still need to stay at home. Why are they staying at home if not to protect their elders who are going out?
Without them, the government would have faced an eternal lockdown until a kind of social and economic collapse took place.
Cockup not conspiracy.
"Early results from AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine appear to show it is ineffective for people over 65 years of age, French President Emmanuel Macron has said.
Macron said there was "very little information" available for the vaccine developed by the British-Swedish company and Oxford University.
"Today we think that it is quasi-ineffective for people over 65," he told the reporters, his office confirmed to AFP.
"What I can tell you officially today is that the early results we have are not encouraging for 60 to 65-year-old people concerning AstraZeneca," he said.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/macron-astrazeneca-vaccine-quasi-ineffective-for-over-65s
That's the PRESIDENT of FRANCE, there. Echelons don't get much higher
As mRNA is a part of viral replication, it is hard to object to mRNA vaccines. They just cut out the middlemen.
Advice from 111 year-old May Willis, at 20 seconds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-sussex-56085858
Also I can't quite recall - did you purchase the integrity needed for making these charges against the EU by retro condemning Johnson for his lives-costing mishandling of the lives-costing Cummings scandal?
If you did, fine. But I can't remember.
Edit: Of course you are right that there may well be a period, later in the year, when it's OK to end all restrictions even before everyone has been jabbed (whilst still encouraging them to get jabbed as soon as they can). That's public-health decision, though.
If our elders are vaccinated, if pubs and restaurants are open, then there's no justification to tell us its illegal to go out without a vaccine we can't get. If its legal to go out, I'm going out and I'll be damned if anyone tells me otherwise if its legal. Same with anyone else my age I'm sure. Why the hell should we rot at home for a day more than we need to once that's no longer the law?
If pubs and restaurants are open, they're open. I'm prepared to take my chances, I stayed at home to protect those older than me that were at risk not for myself.
We might have been well past riots in the streets and bloody revolution by that stage.
https://twitter.com/UK_CAA/status/1363851603321778184?s=20
Nothing from EASA yet.....
I've praised Ireland. The Irish response was "the best vaccine is the one available to you today". That was very well put and should have been the response other countries had. Blaming people isn't blaming the institution - this was not an institutional failure it was a personal one by the people who screwed up.
The Cummings "scandal" didn't cost lives. So no, it was much ado about nothing and remotely comparing it with fuelling antivax conspiracies is patent codswallop.
I will turn into a lockdown sceptic myself sometime in March, it is not necessary once the threat to the health service is removed.
Here's the link (£) - https://www.ft.com/content/100df7f6-d79c-4382-9e39-d7f3e859bae5
That's a bellwether, right there.
Bit annoying for the 95+% less genetically gifted mind.
Luca Attanasio, 43, died in hospital on Monday after the United Nations convoy he was travelling in came under fire near Goma, a statement said. The convoy reportedly belonged to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP)."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56151600
Let me know if you change your mind.
On the europhobia, as I say, it's just on the right side of the line atm but it is in the danger zone. I sense "frogs" and "krauts" are not far away. But of course it would be unfair to condemn something before you've done it. I am, though, preparing to condemn. Which is in itself a serious thing.
And if you have a scintilla of concern that he may not, dare I say welcome to the world of for example @contrarian and, to a lesser degree, of me.
I sincerely hope they follow your well-reasoned logic.
Warn people about the dangers of long Covid and then let us decide. If I'm not at risk of passing it to what we used to call the vulnerable (since they're vaccinated and out and about in your scenario) then how is it possible to justify keeping us locked out of society?
The Government risks having a real problem with this - and it can't Gestapo its way out of it - so it'll be better to shape it.