"Wales would consider introducing curfews for men to help women feel safer in the event of a ‘crisis’, First Minister Mark Drakeford has said.
The politician said the action would not be ‘top of the list’ and would only ever be temporary – but refused to rule it out if ‘dramatic action’ was called for. It comes after Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulescoomb suggested a 6pm curfew for men after women were told to change their behaviour following Sarah Everard’s disappearance.
Mr Drakeford was asked by the BBC about the idea of introducing curfews on men in areas where there were concerns of women being assaulted."
Mark Drakeford was making a spur-of-the-moment response to a question. Whether this is an idiocy that he already regrets or reveals a worrying streak of extreme authoritarianism is unclear. Given that the remark came from a Labour leftist you could advance either argument.
Jenny Jones, on the other hand, wasn't being entirely serious with her original remark but was seeking to make a point. Feminists have been proposing male curfews in response to horrors like the Sarah Everard murder for decades. The point, of course, is not to achieve a male curfew but to highlight that a de facto female curfew exists and is profoundly wrong.
When I think of Mark Drakeford, I would always assume cockup ahead of conspiracy.
He isn’t, on the whole, very authoritarian in his instincts - indeed, arguably like Johnson, he would have been better in coping with this vaccine had he been more authoritarian. His instinct to have a tight lockdown followed by general release in October, for example, was in no way authoritarian and was a fiasco.
Just had an email advertising a Gin Night, with several small Essex distilleries talking about their gins on Zoom. Attenders can buy a pack with samples of the gins, plus mixers and what are described as 'other exciting bits', although the packs aren't compulsory. Interesting idea. Might well give it a go!
Hmmm. This is how a new habit be gins.
Apologies, colleagues for setting our resident punner off again!
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
“What might the end of the pandemic look like? There are two main possibilities. The first, and most likely, is that Sars-CoV-2 becomes an endemic coronavirus that gives rise to large numbers of infections in winter. Vaccinated or previously infected people may get infected again, but because they have some measure of immunity their infections will be mild, much as with the four seasonal coronaviruses we have lived with for decades. Unvaccinated people and an unlucky few whose immunity isn’t protective may become seriously ill. Elderly people, those with certain underlying conditions and healthcare workers will need a booster every now and then. Seasonal coronaviruses tend to rise in two-yearly cycles, so it could be that a booster is needed every other year.
The second, more desirable outcome is that we treat Sars-CoV-2 a bit like measles, and try to stamp it out as completely as we can. I’ve seen erroneous commentary that this isn’t possible because measles doesn’t mutate as fast as Sars-CoV-2. In fact, measles intrinsically mutates faster; it just makes more errors as it replicates because, unlike coronavirus, it doesn’t bother with proofreading. The real reason for the near elimination of measles is that its equivalent of Spike is more constrained by the structures it must form and by the multiple different types of neutralising antibodies induced by the vaccine. Near elimination of Sars-CoV-2 could be equally possible if updated, highly effective vaccines prevent the virus and any evolving variants from spreading. With better vaccine technology we might be able to direct a very strong antibody response to the bits of Spike that the virus can’t do without; alternatively, there might be a vaccine that covers a wide range of different Spike variants – so wide that there is no way for the virus to evolve to escape them all.”
Or it could start out as the first approach, and turn into the second as we introduce childhood vaccines along with the existing MMR, etc.
It’s possible that the existing common cold coronaviruses were as nasty as this one when they first made the jump into humans - but whether they were at that point similarly dangerous for immune naive adults, while being largely innocuous for children, is a matter of conjecture.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
Chris Whitty: "I'm a scientist. Zero means zero. If you don't mean zero don't call it zero." Guernsey CMO "Zero Covid is epidemiologically illiterate"
It means targeting zero. You don't need to be massively obtuse. When people say they have "zero tolerance" for bullying it doesn't mean they have wished bullying into non-existence. They are literally tolerating bullying because at the point when they make that comment the bullying has happened.
I don't know if Zero (targeted) Covid is a good strategy or not at this point. Vaccination has changed the equation massively. On the one hand, it makes it easier to have a Zero-Covid strategy. On the other hand it may make it less necessary.
I do know that if our governments had properly pursued a Zero-Covid strategy, or even a Less-Covid strategy, many of those 125 000 would still be with us today,
It should not be the role of government to eliminate risk. And as others have pointed out, they haven’t even bothered to provide a cost benefit analysis of their measures a whole, yet alone a targeted analysis of each individual measure.
I don’t mean to sound blunt but who cares if our excess death goes up by a few hundred a day in the winter months. Its debatable whether taken over the period 2020-2025 you’ll even notice it. It’s time to announce job done and let the rest of get on with staving off personal bankruptcy and mental breakdowns in our families.
It's the role of government to eliminate risk to society.
I'm sorry but this is nonsense on stilts.
This is not the role of government and, in any case, you can never eliminate risk. All you can ever do is manage it. The aim should be to keep it as low as is possible given a society's risk appetite and the other demands a free society has.
But risk always has or always will be with us.
So you want to live in a society where Government shrugs its shoulders over eliminating societal risk? Just to "manage" it. That is 180 degrees different from your position a couple of days ago. Where you were demanding something be done to protect women from the risk of violence from men. To ensure women can rise to fulfill their full potential as equals of men. A change which clearly men were unable to effect themselves. Those of us who said we were already living our lives by the standards you want were not doing enough to address the broader problem within society. We were "whingers".
Hypocrisy on stilts.
No, it's just your language. You can't eliminate risk. You can manage it at acceptable levels. For example, you can reduce road deaths but not eliminate them.
As an individual, I could do nothing to eliminate the risk from Covid. Except fasten myself away as a hermit for decades - meaning I couldn't catch it, so couldn't transmit it. I couldn't exactly sit at home working on a vaccine in my man cave.
The Government though could take steps to eliminate risks to society from Covid. And has. I fully expect that my life will be very much back to normal in the second half of this year. That is down to actions by Government that have removed the material risk - to the point where it has been effectively eliminated from my life. By lockdowns, then vaccination.
One controversial thing that David doesn’t take into account is immunity through past infection. Lockdown was instituted by a team led by Neil Ferguson. Last month the Indie reported him saying -
“As much as one-third of the UK population may already have gained some level of immunity by contracting and recovering from Covid-19, said Prof Ferguson. And this pool of protection is being quickly expanded by vaccination to take the population towards herd immunity status.”
Of that 30% (let’s call it 25% conservatively) it is not unreasonable to suppose a great proportion are those of working age, who have had to be out and about, and thus exposed to the virus. There will be an overlap of course but the sheer transmissibility of the Kent variant will have meant more and more people will have got the virus. So it’s quite possible 50% of the population have some degree of immunity already.
Now, variants do offer some escape from immune reaction, but Rupert Beale, who is the Group Leader of the Cambridge Cell Biology of Infection Lab says -
“Vaccinated or previously infected people may get infected again, but because they have some measure of immunity their infections will be mild, much as with the four seasonal coronaviruses we have lived with for decades.”
Quite rightly, herd immunity through prior infection is something no government should aim for, and that our government was clinging to it last March for as long as it was gives it no credit, but we are where we are. In that context the pace of unlocking does seem to be about right.
Finally below is an Tweet from Shane Crotty, an immunologist at La Jolla Institute of Immunology, who estimates the level of protection given by prior infection to a few of the current variants -
Really good, fair analysis by David. The pressure to be optimistic is not coming from most of the population, who in poll after poll lean on the cautious side, but from some backbenchers. Johnson is easily strong enough to ignore them if he can repress his own bias to cheery optimism. The population has been very tolerant so far but if he relaxes too early and then needs a new lockdown in early summer, I can see a real backlash.
My workplace (100 staff) is shut till September, and most of us think it'll be spring 2022 before it partially reopens. I don't know anyone who's had a haircut this year, apart from some home efforts. People round here are still being very careful - many wearing masks on walks, steering long circles around each other (with friendly nods of appreciation), hurrying through supermarkets if they go at all.
Our experience too. We don't go to the big supermarket at all click and collect if we have too. Even with two jabs I will still wear a mask...
My experience is that the "cautious" stuff from the general population is a mile wide and a inch thick.
Lots of people going on about how terrible it is. Followed by "Do you want to come round for a drink? We could sit in the garden"...
Quite. And the notion that, if masking mandates are dumped on June 21st, more than a tiny minority of hardcore germophobes will keep using them, is for the birds. Masks are horrible.
Above all, I think what people most want is a resumption of social interaction that's not mediated through a bloody screen. If and when step 2 arrives in England - with outdoor catering and non-food retail due to come back at the same time - I reckon that the shops will be largely deserted but any pubs and restaurants that find it economic to reopen will do a brisk trade. We've been able to buy yet more tat through home delivery throughout all of this; what folk really want is to have a laugh and get pissed together.
To accompany the government's plan for legal limits on social contact to be lifted by 21 June, I'd like to see the government issue clear and strong guidance (not laws) for all screens to be removed and masks not to be worn. We should make it socially unacceptable to continue with these practices.
Why ? Mask wearing on public transport - particularly in the winter - is quite sensible from an individual point of view. Why should it ever be socially unacceptable to wish to avoid a cold ?
Masks do little to stop you catching respiratory infections, so they are really there to protect your fellow travellers. As I am surprised you haven't picked up over the last year. But hopefully we have also learnt not to go to work when we are ill.
They do both. Their effectiveness for personal protection depends on the grade of mask and the care taken by the wearer. It’s simply incorrect to say they do little to protect the wearer.
One controversial thing that David doesn’t take into account is immunity through past infection. Lockdown was instituted by a team led by Neil Ferguson. Last month the Indie reported him saying -
“As much as one-third of the UK population may already have gained some level of immunity by contracting and recovering from Covid-19, said Prof Ferguson. And this pool of protection is being quickly expanded by vaccination to take the population towards herd immunity status.”
Of that 30% (let’s call it 25% conservatively) it is not unreasonable to suppose a great proportion are those of working age, who have had to be out and about, and thus exposed to the virus. There will be an overlap of course but the sheer transmissibility of the Kent variant will have meant more and more people will have got the virus. So it’s quite possible 50% of the population have some degree of immunity already.
Now, variants do offer some escape from immune reaction, but Rupert Beale, who is the Group Leader of the Cambridge Cell Biology of Infection Lab says -
“Vaccinated or previously infected people may get infected again, but because they have some measure of immunity their infections will be mild, much as with the four seasonal coronaviruses we have lived with for decades.”
Quite rightly, herd immunity through prior infection is something no government should aim for, and that our government was clinging to it last March for as long as it was gives it no credit, but we are where we are. In that context the pace of unlocking does seem to be about right.
Finally below is an Tweet from Shane Crotty, an immunologist at La Jolla Institute of Immunology, who estimates the level of protection given by prior infection to a few of the current variants -
Too much generalising from our personal experience and preferences in this. Once lockdown eases I think the pressure to wear masks will ease, but it's unreasonably authoritarian to pressure people to remove them if they don't want to - it really goes from one extreme to the other. Frankly I'll wear a mask in close company with strangers for the forseeable future, and if you don't like it you can socialise with someone else. I'm no libertarian, but really, what business is it of the Government to tell me what to wear if I'm not actually causing a hazard?
I can see some potential for real friction in this, with people shouting at each other in pubs etc. I'm the most equable bloke you're ever likely to meet, but I'm really quite annoyed at the suggestion.
In re masks - the dilemma there is that although they are a necessary public health measure it’s easy to forget that not so many months ago they were primarily frowned upon as an aid to crime.
Masks can’t work in nightclubs so the compulsion will have to go but the reverse, making people do so, is counterproductive. Keep them on the Tube at the very least.
I wouldn't have it mandated though. If people want to wear them then that's up to them. I personally can't wait to get rid of it and the one way system, screens and everything else that has become commonplace over the last year. There really isn't a single thing I'd like to keep from the lockdown year.
More or less agreed. But if I can continue to avoid the colds I did this winter, I will.
Just had an email advertising a Gin Night, with several small Essex distilleries talking about their gins on Zoom. Attenders can buy a pack with samples of the gins, plus mixers and what are described as 'other exciting bits', although the packs aren't compulsory. Interesting idea. Might well give it a go!
Hmmm. This is how a new habit be gins.
Apologies, colleagues for setting our resident punner off again!
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
While I agree with the main thrust of David's piece - that there remains a chance of blowing it at the last moment by going too far too fast with restrictions easing - I think there's more reason to be optimistic.
We've got the effects on hospitalisation and death of the vaccines measured: Which does come in at around 75% on average after 3 weeks, but continues to increase after that.
And we do have to look back quite some distance to see the effects. The vaccine effect on deaths today will have come from infections-that-didn't-happen three weeks ago, with protection being given by vaccines about three weeks earlier than that (more or less, on average, slightly handwavy, etc). So that's only about half of the Groups 1-4 protected. This will ramp up quite a lot going forwards; it was around the start of the big push to get the Groups 1-4 targets done.
The effects on deaths would be stark:
David's also right (as are others) to focus on hospitalisations and ICU admissions (the dark pink and purple lines respectively); the effects on both of those will be minor so far, but should be climbing about as steeply as they ever get.
Multiply the percentage reduction in each of those lines by 75% (at 3 weeks) climbing to 90-95% (at 3-6 weeks) and you'd get the approximate reductions due to vaccination (and prior infection; don't worry, @DougSeal, I added that in at a conservative estimate of 25% infected and randomly spread by age).
It's very handwavy, but looking at the numbers first-dosed against time, I reckon we're looking at: Right now: vaccination will be reducing deaths by 40-50% of what we'd otherwise see against cases (that is, we're seeing 100-150 deaths per day right now; that'd be 200-300 or so if we'd not seen those vaccinations). This effect will climb to around 80% reduction (against case loads) by the end of the month. And 90%+ by the end of April.
Hospitalisations reduced by 25-35% against case loads due to vaccinations right now; rising to around 60-65% by the end of the month. And 80%+ by the end of April.
ICE admissions reduced by 10-20% due to vaccinations right now, rising to 40-50% by the end of the month. And 70%+ by the end of April.
Add to this the impairment in transmission from vaccination and infection, and the disease finds it harder to get around to cause the damage in the first place.
That's just my quick-and-dirty handwavy crude spreadsheet stuff, but I think it gives a reasonable idea. It does point to the unlocking being somewhere in the region of the right sort of timetable - the ICU admissions would therefore be the most crucial metric (as they're least and last helped by the vaccination programme due to the age skew of admissions). If they (and hospitalisations) keep either going down or, at worst, flatline, I reckon we'll stay on schedule.
“What might the end of the pandemic look like? There are two main possibilities. The first, and most likely, is that Sars-CoV-2 becomes an endemic coronavirus that gives rise to large numbers of infections in winter. Vaccinated or previously infected people may get infected again, but because they have some measure of immunity their infections will be mild, much as with the four seasonal coronaviruses we have lived with for decades. Unvaccinated people and an unlucky few whose immunity isn’t protective may become seriously ill. Elderly people, those with certain underlying conditions and healthcare workers will need a booster every now and then. Seasonal coronaviruses tend to rise in two-yearly cycles, so it could be that a booster is needed every other year.
The second, more desirable outcome is that we treat Sars-CoV-2 a bit like measles, and try to stamp it out as completely as we can. I’ve seen erroneous commentary that this isn’t possible because measles doesn’t mutate as fast as Sars-CoV-2. In fact, measles intrinsically mutates faster; it just makes more errors as it replicates because, unlike coronavirus, it doesn’t bother with proofreading. The real reason for the near elimination of measles is that its equivalent of Spike is more constrained by the structures it must form and by the multiple different types of neutralising antibodies induced by the vaccine. Near elimination of Sars-CoV-2 could be equally possible if updated, highly effective vaccines prevent the virus and any evolving variants from spreading. With better vaccine technology we might be able to direct a very strong antibody response to the bits of Spike that the virus can’t do without; alternatively, there might be a vaccine that covers a wide range of different Spike variants – so wide that there is no way for the virus to evolve to escape them all.”
Or it could start out as the first approach, and turn into the second as we introduce childhood vaccines along with the existing MMR, etc.
It’s possible that the existing common cold coronaviruses were as nasty as this one when they first made the jump into humans - but whether they were at that point similarly dangerous for immune naive adults, while being largely innocuous for children, is a matter of conjecture.
There has been a lot of debate on here, and elsewhere, as to whether the 1889/90 pandemic was a coronavirus. I like the idea but I accept here are many with greater knowledge than me who are sceptical.
Just had an email advertising a Gin Night, with several small Essex distilleries talking about their gins on Zoom. Attenders can buy a pack with samples of the gins, plus mixers and what are described as 'other exciting bits', although the packs aren't compulsory. Interesting idea. Might well give it a go!
Hmmm. This is how a new habit be gins.
Apologies, colleagues for setting our resident punner off again!
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
Just had an email advertising a Gin Night, with several small Essex distilleries talking about their gins on Zoom. Attenders can buy a pack with samples of the gins, plus mixers and what are described as 'other exciting bits', although the packs aren't compulsory. Interesting idea. Might well give it a go!
Hmmm. This is how a new habit be gins.
Apologies, colleagues for setting our resident punner off again!
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
I just thought we could all do with a tonic.
Can't we just put the whole thing on ice?
No, you’re just going to have to grin and beer it.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
Just had an email advertising a Gin Night, with several small Essex distilleries talking about their gins on Zoom. Attenders can buy a pack with samples of the gins, plus mixers and what are described as 'other exciting bits', although the packs aren't compulsory. Interesting idea. Might well give it a go!
Hmmm. This is how a new habit be gins.
Apologies, colleagues for setting our resident punner off again!
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
I just thought we could all do with a tonic.
Can't we just put the whole thing on ice?
No, you’re just going to have to grin and beer it.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
Chris Whitty: "I'm a scientist. Zero means zero. If you don't mean zero don't call it zero." Guernsey CMO "Zero Covid is epidemiologically illiterate"
It means targeting zero. You don't need to be massively obtuse. When people say they have "zero tolerance" for bullying it doesn't mean they have wished bullying into non-existence. They are literally tolerating bullying because at the point when they make that comment the bullying has happened.
If it means targeting zero or zero tolerance then the call should be for Covid Zero Tolerance, or Target Zero Covid, not Zero Covid. It does not take an unreasonable or obtuse person to conclude it means something other than the intended meaning at present.
If a message is willfully or otherwise misinterpreted so easily, it is not fit for purpose and should be changed to avoid misunderstandings, not stuck without of, what, some loyalty to a PR slogan?
Yep, thank goodness we’d never obsess about statues here.
I'm surprised that nobody from the nuttier elements has proposed dragging them off to the Embankment and dumping them into the Thames. Much of the population of classical Athens consisted of slaves, after all.
Header. Not sure. David says "Yet the political pressure, and direction, is unsurprisingly all in favour of loosening things up." Is this true?
Pretty much, yes. Now that the olds have been vaccinated the motivation for perma-lockdown through fear has gone. We all just want this to be over.
The remaining advocates for sitting on our arses for the rest of the year are now the Zero Covid screwballs, with a little assistance from the devolved administrations which don't have the responsibility for paying for all of this.
Thankfully it looks like Whitty and Valence are not getting sucked into the zero-covid mind zap and are telling Johnson he needs to accept that we learn to live with endemic covid each autumn/winter.
Whitty was actually quite scathing about Zero Covid in his evidence. He said that they needed to put a number on it as no one, not even themselves, thinks complete elimination possible. Even Jacinda Aderne appears to be tentatively moving from elimination to suppression in NZ at some point after they have completed their vaccination programme.
Jacinda Ardern seems to agree with Hill, telling her caucus in January that, "Our goal has to be to get the management of Covid-19 to a similar place as we do seasonally with the flu. It won't be a disease that we see simply disappear after one round of vaccinations across the population."
Zero-Covid is about whether you always aim for the lowest possible level of infections, or whether you get the infection rate to a certain level and accept you will be treating people and people will die, in commensurate numbers. Zero-Covid isn't about achieving actual elimination but it is about whack-a-mole on any outbreaks that occur.
It isn't an obviously stupid strategy. It is the strategy followed by South Korea and Taiwan, without the help of vaccines, with far less death and economic damage and much greater success than anywhere in the West.
Zero-Covid does however rely on a very high level of vigilance and compliance, if it's going to work.
“Zero Covid” suffers from the same problem as “Defund the Police”. It doesn’t actually propose what it says on the tin, both are more nuanced, but the implications of both scare the hell out of a lot of people.
South Korea and Taiwan invested heavily in public health after SARS and I support that wholeheartedly. But they are both, in effect, islands only accessible by plane and the massive US military presence in both means that their approaches are going to have to be in sync with the US longer term.
The UK is an island too. I don't think the UK is inherently incapable of following the South Korean and Taiwanese successes, which are genuine ones. (Reminder that England has the second worst cumulative death toll of anywhere in the world - FT tracker)
We make decisions that have consequences. We will go for the "live with the virus" approach, rightly or wrongly.
For the purposes of disease control, Great Britain isn't an island. We won't count as an island again, unless or until the flow of people to and fro across the Channel can be completely stopped in an emergency.
That means getting rid of our reliance on the passage of truck drivers on ferries and through the Chunnel for trade in goods, or at least all essential imports like food. Longer term I think we should actively explore moving as much of the movement of goods as possible to container traffic, as an insurance against having to go through something like coronavirus again, but right now we have to deal with the world as we find it.
Somehow greater reliance on freight trains should be sought.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
Yep, thank goodness we’d never obsess about statues here.
I'm surprised that nobody from the nuttier elements has proposed dragging them off to the Embankment and dumping them into the Thames. Much of the population of classical Athens consisted of slaves, after all.
A storm? I don't believe there's a person on this planet, no matter whether they accept the statues can remain here or that they should be returned immediately to Greece, who thinks governments would have a serious argument about such a trivial thing, if it wasn't a proxy for a different squabble.
When that is so blatant I don't think it can really be called a storm, since everyone will know that the argument is about something entirely different and the 'storm' is just going through the motions.
Too much generalising from our personal experience and preferences in this. Once lockdown eases I think the pressure to wear masks will ease, but it's unreasonably authoritarian to pressure people to remove them if they don't want to - it really goes from one extreme to the other. Frankly I'll wear a mask in close company with strangers for the forseeable future, and if you don't like it you can socialise with someone else. I'm no libertarian, but really, what business is it of the Government to tell me what to wear if I'm not actually causing a hazard?
I can see some potential for real friction in this, with people shouting at each other in pubs etc. I'm the most equable bloke you're ever likely to meet, but I'm really quite annoyed at the suggestion.
In re masks - the dilemma there is that although they are a necessary public health measure it’s easy to forget that not so many months ago they were primarily frowned upon as an aid to crime.
Masks can’t work in nightclubs so the compulsion will have to go but the reverse, making people do so, is counterproductive. Keep them on the Tube at the very least.
I wouldn't have it mandated though. If people want to wear them then that's up to them. I personally can't wait to get rid of it and the one way system, screens and everything else that has become commonplace over the last year. There really isn't a single thing I'd like to keep from the lockdown year.
It's looking for scraps but there is one thing I kind of hope persists post Covid. You get yourself a nice little table at a cafe or pub, maybe alone, maybe with one other person, and although there is (at a pinch) just about room for some stranger to come along and give it the old, "Mind if I join you?" in rhetorical fashion as he slides in there, this has stopped happening during the pandemic. It's become a complete no no. This, for me, is something worth preserving.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
I think that's exactly why those slogans exist. Certain voters will never stand with Person X even if they agree with their Policy Y, so Person X adopts a more extreme version of that policy, allowing Person Alpha to arrive and occupy the space vacated by Person X, adopting Policy Y, getting elected by mopping up all those people who agreed all along, without alienating those who don't really like Policy Y, but will steadfastly vote against Person X.
Yep, thank goodness we’d never obsess about statues here.
I'm surprised that nobody from the nuttier elements has proposed dragging them off to the Embankment and dumping them into the Thames. Much of the population of classical Athens consisted of slaves, after all.
Don't encourage them!
They’ve already been sunk once, they would doubtless survive a second immersion.
If I buy one, would people like me to bring it to the next PB meet up so we can take turns at smashing it?
Actually, I suggest Buddhists would find it offensive. There are posters about in Thailand urging tourists to be respectful of the religion. Cue Charlie Hebdo.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
I think that's exactly why those slogans exist. If voters stand with Person X even if they agree with their Policy Y, so Person X adopts a more extreme version of that policy, allowing Person Alpha to arrive and occupy the space vacated by Person X, adopting Policy Y, getting elected by mopping up all those people who agreed all along, without alienating those who don't really like Policy Y, but will steadfastly vote against Person X.
Thus Person X gets Policy Y implemented.
I think that is a little bit too sophisticated, and if it is happening it is unintentional on the part of those getting knickers in a twist that people don't understand what they mean by a silly slogan.
Just had an email advertising a Gin Night, with several small Essex distilleries talking about their gins on Zoom. Attenders can buy a pack with samples of the gins, plus mixers and what are described as 'other exciting bits', although the packs aren't compulsory. Interesting idea. Might well give it a go!
Hmmm. This is how a new habit be gins.
Apologies, colleagues for setting our resident punner off again!
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
Your wife had the same drinking habits as mine! Bitter lemon is no longer as far as I know.
If I buy one, would people like me to bring it to the next PB meet up so we can take turns at smashing it?
Actually, I suggest Buddhists would find it offensive. There are posters about in Thailand urging tourists to be respectful of the religion. Cue Charlie Hebdo.
In my admittedly anecdotal experience of Buddhists, most of them are not likely to be offended by satires on the Buddha. The Buddha, after all, may have been possessed of great wisdom and understanding but he was merely human, not God in human form or the messenger of God/a god.
They would find it completely silly and ridiculous, but that’s only because it is.
A storm? I don't believe there's a person on this planet, no matter whether they accept the statues can remain here or that they should be returned immediately to Greece, who thinks governments would have a serious argument about such a trivial thing, if it wasn't a proxy for a different squabble.
When that is so blatant I don't think it can really be called a storm, since everyone will know that the argument is about something entirely different and the 'storm' is just going through the motions.
It's a long-standing grievance, though. Being going on much longer than Scottish independence. For example.
If I buy one, would people like me to bring it to the next PB meet up so we can take turns at smashing it?
Actually, I suggest Buddhists would find it offensive. There are posters about in Thailand urging tourists to be respectful of the religion. Cue Charlie Hebdo.
In my admittedly anecdotal experience of Buddhists, most of them are not likely to be offended by satires on the Buddha. The Buddha, after all, may have been possessed of great wisdom and understanding but he was merely human, not God in human form or the messenger of God/a god.
They would find it completely silly and ridiculous, but that’s only because it is.
I recall an image from a magazine of some monk with the headline of 'The face of Buddhist Terror'. No idea what he did to earn that title, or if it was fair, but it seems probable with so many buddhists in the world some groups are going to be as extreme and sensitive about their creed as anyone else.
Really good, fair analysis by David. The pressure to be optimistic is not coming from most of the population, who in poll after poll lean on the cautious side, but from some backbenchers. Johnson is easily strong enough to ignore them if he can repress his own bias to cheery optimism. The population has been very tolerant so far but if he relaxes too early and then needs a new lockdown in early summer, I can see a real backlash.
My workplace (100 staff) is shut till September, and most of us think it'll be spring 2022 before it partially reopens. I don't know anyone who's had a haircut this year, apart from some home efforts. People round here are still being very careful - many wearing masks on walks, steering long circles around each other (with friendly nods of appreciation), hurrying through supermarkets if they go at all.
Our experience too. We don't go to the big supermarket at all click and collect if we have too. Even with two jabs I will still wear a mask...
My experience is that the "cautious" stuff from the general population is a mile wide and a inch thick.
Lots of people going on about how terrible it is. Followed by "Do you want to come round for a drink? We could sit in the garden"...
Quite. And the notion that, if masking mandates are dumped on June 21st, more than a tiny minority of hardcore germophobes will keep using them, is for the birds. Masks are horrible.
Above all, I think what people most want is a resumption of social interaction that's not mediated through a bloody screen. If and when step 2 arrives in England - with outdoor catering and non-food retail due to come back at the same time - I reckon that the shops will be largely deserted but any pubs and restaurants that find it economic to reopen will do a brisk trade. We've been able to buy yet more tat through home delivery throughout all of this; what folk really want is to have a laugh and get pissed together.
I don't even enjoy going out for a laugh and getting pissed and even I want to do that.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
Chris Whitty: "I'm a scientist. Zero means zero. If you don't mean zero don't call it zero." Guernsey CMO "Zero Covid is epidemiologically illiterate"
It means targeting zero. You don't need to be massively obtuse. When people say they have "zero tolerance" for bullying it doesn't mean they have wished bullying into non-existence. They are literally tolerating bullying because at the point when they make that comment the bullying has happened.
If it means targeting zero or zero tolerance then the call should be for Covid Zero Tolerance, or Target Zero Covid, not Zero Covid. It does not take an unreasonable or obtuse person to conclude it means something other than the intended meaning at present.
If a message is willfully or otherwise misinterpreted so easily, it is not fit for purpose and should be changed to avoid misunderstandings, not stuck without of, what, some loyalty to a PR slogan?
The point is, whether there is any Covid or not is outside our control. What is in our control is whether our policy is always to reduce incidence of Covid or whether we get to a level that we accept, and then implement lockdown, mask-wearing and other non-medical interventions as are needed to keep that level in bounds ("living with the virus").
Rather than complaining "there is no such thing as Zero-Covid", people could more usefully spend the thirty seconds explaining the choice. Because there is a choice to be made.
If I buy one, would people like me to bring it to the next PB meet up so we can take turns at smashing it?
Actually, I suggest Buddhists would find it offensive. There are posters about in Thailand urging tourists to be respectful of the religion. Cue Charlie Hebdo.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
I think that's exactly why those slogans exist. If voters stand with Person X even if they agree with their Policy Y, so Person X adopts a more extreme version of that policy, allowing Person Alpha to arrive and occupy the space vacated by Person X, adopting Policy Y, getting elected by mopping up all those people who agreed all along, without alienating those who don't really like Policy Y, but will steadfastly vote against Person X.
Thus Person X gets Policy Y implemented.
I think that is a little bit too sophisticated, and if it is happening it is unintentional on the part of those getting knickers in a twist that people don't understand what they mean by a silly slogan.
I think the people protesting blindly are unaware of the role they are playing. You see it on all sides.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
Chris Whitty: "I'm a scientist. Zero means zero. If you don't mean zero don't call it zero." Guernsey CMO "Zero Covid is epidemiologically illiterate"
It means targeting zero. You don't need to be massively obtuse. When people say they have "zero tolerance" for bullying it doesn't mean they have wished bullying into non-existence. They are literally tolerating bullying because at the point when they make that comment the bullying has happened.
If it means targeting zero or zero tolerance then the call should be for Covid Zero Tolerance, or Target Zero Covid, not Zero Covid. It does not take an unreasonable or obtuse person to conclude it means something other than the intended meaning at present.
If a message is willfully or otherwise misinterpreted so easily, it is not fit for purpose and should be changed to avoid misunderstandings, not stuck without of, what, some loyalty to a PR slogan?
The point is, whether there is any Covid or not is outside our control. What is in our control is whether our policy is always to reduce incidence of Covid or whether we get to a level that we accept, and then implement lockdown, mask-wearing and other non-medical interventions as are needed to keep that level in bounds ("living with the virus").
Rather than complaining "there is no such thing as Zero-Covid", people could more usefully spend the thirty seconds explaining the choice. Because there is a choice to be made.
If you need to explain what it means then you’ve lost the battle.
It should not be the role of government to eliminate risk. And as others have pointed out, they haven’t even bothered to provide a cost benefit analysis of their measures a whole, yet alone a targeted analysis of each individual measure.
I don’t mean to sound blunt but who cares if our excess death goes up by a few hundred a day in the winter months. Its debatable whether taken over the period 2020-2025 you’ll even notice it. It’s time to announce job done and let the rest of get on with staving off personal bankruptcy and mental breakdowns in our families.
It's the role of government to eliminate risk to society.
I'm sorry but this is nonsense on stilts.
This is not the role of government and, in any case, you can never eliminate risk. All you can ever do is manage it. The aim should be to keep it as low as is possible given a society's risk appetite and the other demands a free society has.
But risk always has or always will be with us.
So you want to live in a society where Government shrugs its shoulders over eliminating societal risk? Just to "manage" it. That is 180 degrees different from your position a couple of days ago. Where you were demanding something be done to protect women from the risk of violence from men. To ensure women can rise to fulfill their full potential as equals of men. A change which clearly men were unable to effect themselves. Those of us who said we were already living our lives by the standards you want were not doing enough to address the broader problem within society. We were "whingers".
Hypocrisy on stilts.
There might well be a point about how females have to self-restrict themselves more than males, in a way that's unfair, due to the predatory behaviour of some men.
However, right now I want to focus on understanding the facts of the Sarah Everard case and how on earth such an evil man came to be working for the Metropolitan Police in a position of trust, and if there were already suspicions or concerns why nothing was done about it.
As a parent I want to know my child (of any sex) can safely approach or be approached by a police officer without fear of abduction or worse and, right now, understanding how something this awful could happen, and preventing it happen again, is a much bigger concern to me.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
If I were a cynical man I'd suspect that the entire point of it is to redefine what these seemingly extreme slogans meaning in the public consciousness, gain broader support and then reverse ferret and insist that x% of the population do support abolish the police (in the literal meaning), rather than the softer versions pedalled outwardly.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
I think that's exactly why those slogans exist. Certain voters will never stand with Person X even if they agree with their Policy Y, so Person X adopts a more extreme version of that policy, allowing Person Alpha to arrive and occupy the space vacated by Person X, adopting Policy Y, getting elected by mopping up all those people who agreed all along, without alienating those who don't really like Policy Y, but will steadfastly vote against Person X.
Thus Person X gets Policy Y implemented.
Its the Overton Window.
If you want Y then demand Z. Y then seems moderate.
We surely have to examine anti-covid measures enacted by the government for an explanation for why women feel less safe on our streets.
Emergency legislation brought in without scrutiny or checks and balances can be easily exploited by the unscrupulous (though whether or not it has been is obviously moot).
Moreover, the CCTV world that greatly enhances our safety in the modern world is surely being undermined by the vast increase in mask usage.
I'm sure their (often compulsory) introduction was a great boon to your average street criminal
Zero covid deaths is a ridiculous target. Zero excess deaths would be a sensible target. No point reducing covid deaths at the expense of increased cancer deaths. Should be achievable if we continue our good habits, hand washing, masks on public transport, etc.
If I buy one, would people like me to bring it to the next PB meet up so we can take turns at smashing it?
Actually, I suggest Buddhists would find it offensive. There are posters about in Thailand urging tourists to be respectful of the religion. Cue Charlie Hebdo.
In my admittedly anecdotal experience of Buddhists, most of them are not likely to be offended by satires on the Buddha. The Buddha, after all, may have been possessed of great wisdom and understanding but he was merely human, not God in human form or the messenger of God/a god.
They would find it completely silly and ridiculous, but that’s only because it is.
I recall an image from a magazine of some monk with the headline of 'The face of Buddhist Terror'. No idea what he did to earn that title, or if it was fair, but it seems probable with so many buddhists in the world some groups are going to be as extreme and sensitive about their creed as anyone else.
If you have a sick sense of humour, the way that some Japanese Buddhists squared their circle to adapt to Japanese Militarism during WWII is funny.
You might think that turbo charged racist fascism would conflict with loving all life... but those guys found a way...
Zero covid deaths is a ridiculous target. Zero excess deaths would be a sensible target. No point reducing covid deaths at the expense of increased cancer deaths. Should be achievable if we continue our good habits, hand washing, masks on public transport, etc.
The thing is we're already (probably) at zero excess deaths. We won't see that confirmed until Easter but we're probably already there.
Even zero tolerance for Covid is a bloody stupid idea. We need to tolerate and live with Covid, we need to manage it.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
Agreed. And I think how it turns out depends quite a bit on how cautious we are for the next month and a half.
I’d also give credit to government for finally using rapid testing as it should be used. And notably, the organisations using it (schools and businesses) are considerably more likely to be successful in getting those testing positive to isolate than was Dido.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
Chris Whitty: "I'm a scientist. Zero means zero. If you don't mean zero don't call it zero." Guernsey CMO "Zero Covid is epidemiologically illiterate"
It means targeting zero. You don't need to be massively obtuse. When people say they have "zero tolerance" for bullying it doesn't mean they have wished bullying into non-existence. They are literally tolerating bullying because at the point when they make that comment the bullying has happened.
If it means targeting zero or zero tolerance then the call should be for Covid Zero Tolerance, or Target Zero Covid, not Zero Covid. It does not take an unreasonable or obtuse person to conclude it means something other than the intended meaning at present.
If a message is willfully or otherwise misinterpreted so easily, it is not fit for purpose and should be changed to avoid misunderstandings, not stuck without of, what, some loyalty to a PR slogan?
The point is, whether there is any Covid or not is outside our control. What is in our control is whether our policy is always to reduce incidence of Covid or whether we get to a level that we accept, and then implement lockdown, mask-wearing and other non-medical interventions as are needed to keep that level in bounds ("living with the virus").
Rather than complaining "there is no such thing as Zero-Covid", people could more usefully spend the thirty seconds explaining the choice. Because there is a choice to be made.
No because there isn't a choice to be made. We need to live with Covid, there is no other rational choice. There is no choice to be made.
If someone else wants to make an alternative suggestion then let them explain what they mean. Do they mean having a lockdown every time there's even a single case like New Zealand? If not, what do they mean?
Too much generalising from our personal experience and preferences in this. Once lockdown eases I think the pressure to wear masks will ease, but it's unreasonably authoritarian to pressure people to remove them if they don't want to - it really goes from one extreme to the other. Frankly I'll wear a mask in close company with strangers for the forseeable future, and if you don't like it you can socialise with someone else. I'm no libertarian, but really, what business is it of the Government to tell me what to wear if I'm not actually causing a hazard?
I can see some potential for real friction in this, with people shouting at each other in pubs etc. I'm the most equable bloke you're ever likely to meet, but I'm really quite annoyed at the suggestion.
In re masks - the dilemma there is that although they are a necessary public health measure it’s easy to forget that not so many months ago they were primarily frowned upon as an aid to crime.
Masks can’t work in nightclubs so the compulsion will have to go but the reverse, making people do so, is counterproductive. Keep them on the Tube at the very least.
I wouldn't have it mandated though. If people want to wear them then that's up to them. I personally can't wait to get rid of it and the one way system, screens and everything else that has become commonplace over the last year. There really isn't a single thing I'd like to keep from the lockdown year.
Amen. I even miss my commute.
Yes, thinking back on the commute it was about 30 minutes of downtime for me twice a day where I could shut everything out and just put my headphones on and read a book.
Must be nice to have such a relaxed job. Used it to get ahead on my emails
The Telegraph has a very different reporting angle to the Times (which is largely just about the cuts) on the Defence review next week.
It majors on the huge amount of cash (c.£80bn) going in over the next 4 years on new technology and capability upgrades, and the cap on nuclear warheads we hold in reserve will also be raised for deterrence, which seems to be due to proliferation and to send China a message:
We've basically spent the last year under house arrest, with large parts of our economy devastated due to a botched research, probably funded by the Chinese military. Well the circumstantial evidence seems overwhelming, but we'll never know for sure. Why are we in the West so chilled out about this?
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
Chris Whitty: "I'm a scientist. Zero means zero. If you don't mean zero don't call it zero." Guernsey CMO "Zero Covid is epidemiologically illiterate"
It means targeting zero. You don't need to be massively obtuse. When people say they have "zero tolerance" for bullying it doesn't mean they have wished bullying into non-existence. They are literally tolerating bullying because at the point when they make that comment the bullying has happened.
If it means targeting zero or zero tolerance then the call should be for Covid Zero Tolerance, or Target Zero Covid, not Zero Covid. It does not take an unreasonable or obtuse person to conclude it means something other than the intended meaning at present.
If a message is willfully or otherwise misinterpreted so easily, it is not fit for purpose and should be changed to avoid misunderstandings, not stuck without of, what, some loyalty to a PR slogan?
The point is, whether there is any Covid or not is outside our control. What is in our control is whether our policy is always to reduce incidence of Covid or whether we get to a level that we accept, and then implement lockdown, mask-wearing and other non-medical interventions as are needed to keep that level in bounds ("living with the virus").
Rather than complaining "there is no such thing as Zero-Covid", people could more usefully spend the thirty seconds explaining the choice. Because there is a choice to be made.
No because there isn't a choice to be made. We need to live with Covid, there is no other rational choice. There is no choice to be made.
If someone else wants to make an alternative suggestion then let them explain what they mean. Do they mean having a lockdown every time there's even a single case like New Zealand? If not, what do they mean?
What is meant is, you have to know your risk profile as a nation/society. That is, what is the level of risk that you are prepared to live with?
In this case this crudely translates into:
- "how many deaths, hospitalizations, and cases of disease causing loss of work/discomfort are we willing to accept in return for no disruption of our normal routine";
OR
- "what is the optimal balance between deaths, hospitalizations, and cases of disease causing loss of work/discomfort AND some modicum of disruption?" This latter may be as little as a large percentage of the population voluntarily continuing to wear face masks and practicing greater social distancing in most non-bubble activities than they did prior to the pandemic.
There is no one right answer to this question. Australia and New Zealand have set their risk tolerance far lower than could be acceptable in the UK. That is their choice based on their particular risk profiles.
We've basically spent the last year under house arrest, with large parts of our economy devastated due to a botched research, probably funded by the Chinese military. Well the circumstantial evidence seems overwhelming, but we'll never know for sure. Why are we in the West so chilled out about this?
Too much generalising from our personal experience and preferences in this. Once lockdown eases I think the pressure to wear masks will ease, but it's unreasonably authoritarian to pressure people to remove them if they don't want to - it really goes from one extreme to the other. Frankly I'll wear a mask in close company with strangers for the forseeable future, and if you don't like it you can socialise with someone else. I'm no libertarian, but really, what business is it of the Government to tell me what to wear if I'm not actually causing a hazard?
I can see some potential for real friction in this, with people shouting at each other in pubs etc. I'm the most equable bloke you're ever likely to meet, but I'm really quite annoyed at the suggestion.
In re masks - the dilemma there is that although they are a necessary public health measure it’s easy to forget that not so many months ago they were primarily frowned upon as an aid to crime.
Masks can’t work in nightclubs so the compulsion will have to go but the reverse, making people do so, is counterproductive. Keep them on the Tube at the very least.
I wouldn't have it mandated though. If people want to wear them then that's up to them. I personally can't wait to get rid of it and the one way system, screens and everything else that has become commonplace over the last year. There really isn't a single thing I'd like to keep from the lockdown year.
Amen. I even miss my commute.
Yes, thinking back on the commute it was about 30 minutes of downtime for me twice a day where I could shut everything out and just put my headphones on and read a book.
Must be nice to have such a relaxed job. Used it to get ahead on my emails
... as, I'm sure, do many others. Which begs the question what's the overall benefit of email?
Since I retired I miss a few things but the constant toad of several hundred emails a day is not one of them.
There is no one right answer to this question. Australia and New Zealand have set their risk tolerance far lower than could be acceptable in the UK. That is their choice based on their particular risk profiles.
The implementation of an Australia/NZ style policy in the UK would have looked very different because the UK is so much more densely populated and connected to the outside world.
Zero covid deaths is a ridiculous target. Zero excess deaths would be a sensible target. No point reducing covid deaths at the expense of increased cancer deaths. Should be achievable if we continue our good habits, hand washing, masks on public transport, etc.
The thing is we're already (probably) at zero excess deaths. We won't see that confirmed until Easter but we're probably already there.
Even zero tolerance for Covid is a bloody stupid idea. We need to tolerate and live with Covid, we need to manage it.
Zero excess deaths is not necessarily so great an achievement now - many of the vulnerable have been killed off in the past year by covid, so we should be hoping for a period of negative excess deaths until the numbers balance out in a few yeas time.
Zero covid deaths is a ridiculous target. Zero excess deaths would be a sensible target. No point reducing covid deaths at the expense of increased cancer deaths. Should be achievable if we continue our good habits, hand washing, masks on public transport, etc.
The thing is we're already (probably) at zero excess deaths. We won't see that confirmed until Easter but we're probably already there.
Even zero tolerance for Covid is a bloody stupid idea. We need to tolerate and live with Covid, we need to manage it.
Zero excess deaths is not necessarily so great an achievement now - many of the vulnerable have been killed off in the past year by covid, so we should be hoping for a period of negative excess deaths until the numbers balance out in a few yeas time.
For obvious reasons I don’t want to “like” that comment but there is, sadly, some truth to it I’m afraid.
Today's Telegraph has a story that a massive ramp up in supply is expected over the next few weeks and we could soon be up to one million shots a day.
It quotes a senior government source as being increasingly confident that all over 40s can be offered a vaccine by 4th April.
It also says that after that it is expected to slow down again so won't be able to vaccinate all adults by May 17th when the pubs reopen but should be able to vaccinate all adults well ahead of the July target.
Suggests there will be more pressure from Tory backbenchers to open earlier.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
I find it quite interesting how Trump has managed to rehabilitate the reputation of Dubya
I don't think Trump did that. I think Michelle Obama and GW himself did that between them. The Obamas made it very clear they had a great appreciation for GW and they way he helped them during the transition. He may not have been the sharpest tool in the box but he was regarded as a decent man by Americans long before Trump redefined what it means to be a bad president.
Three big elections coming up. Dutch general on Tuesday. And Baden Wurttemburg and Rhineland Palatine tomorrow. All 3 seem likely to continue the trend (Trump excepted) of a swing to the incumbents.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
Too much generalising from our personal experience and preferences in this. Once lockdown eases I think the pressure to wear masks will ease, but it's unreasonably authoritarian to pressure people to remove them if they don't want to - it really goes from one extreme to the other. Frankly I'll wear a mask in close company with strangers for the forseeable future, and if you don't like it you can socialise with someone else. I'm no libertarian, but really, what business is it of the Government to tell me what to wear if I'm not actually causing a hazard?
I can see some potential for real friction in this, with people shouting at each other in pubs etc. I'm the most equable bloke you're ever likely to meet, but I'm really quite annoyed at the suggestion.
In re masks - the dilemma there is that although they are a necessary public health measure it’s easy to forget that not so many months ago they were primarily frowned upon as an aid to crime.
Masks can’t work in nightclubs so the compulsion will have to go but the reverse, making people do so, is counterproductive. Keep them on the Tube at the very least.
I wouldn't have it mandated though. If people want to wear them then that's up to them. I personally can't wait to get rid of it and the one way system, screens and everything else that has become commonplace over the last year. There really isn't a single thing I'd like to keep from the lockdown year.
Amen. I even miss my commute.
Yes, thinking back on the commute it was about 30 minutes of downtime for me twice a day where I could shut everything out and just put my headphones on and read a book.
Must be nice to have such a relaxed job. Used it to get ahead on my emails
That's your fault really, Charles. I have very strict rules over out of hours work.
We surely have to examine anti-covid measures enacted by the government for an explanation for why women feel less safe on our streets.
Emergency legislation brought in without scrutiny or checks and balances can be easily exploited by the unscrupulous (though whether or not it has been is obviously moot).
Moreover, the CCTV world that greatly enhances our safety in the modern world is surely being undermined by the vast increase in mask usage.
I'm sure their (often compulsory) introduction was a great boon to your average street criminal
Women feel less safe on the streets because of anti-covid legislation?
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
I love the extreme gaslighting that occurs these days with moronic ideas.
Abolish the Police!*
*actually don't abolish them at all, just re-train, re-allocate, and trim budgets.
Zero Covid!*
*not actually, zero covid, but minimal covid.
Abolish means abolish. Zero means zero.
I remain flabbergasted when, in effect, people push back at criticism of what are simply slogans, when they are so easily misinterpreted, especially in their regular meaning.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
I find this a fascinating social phenomenon, and to the best of my memory it's fairly new. Either the people advocating the slogan are delusional -- but it's unwise to dismiss phenomena in this way -- or perhaps their motivation is not as we think. Jonathan Haidt always says "follow the prestige" (the social psychologist's analogue of "follow the money"): perhaps in these cases the aim is to be seen to win the argument, and to be lauded by ones peers for winning the argument -- rather than necessarily to advance the good cause behind the argument.
This chimes with my view of much of the toxic content of social media: winning the argument becomes paramount. The cause itself is secondary. Not in every case of course, but it would explain the zero-covid and defund-the-police slogan pushing.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
"Wales would consider introducing curfews for men to help women feel safer in the event of a ‘crisis’, First Minister Mark Drakeford has said.
The politician said the action would not be ‘top of the list’ and would only ever be temporary – but refused to rule it out if ‘dramatic action’ was called for. It comes after Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulescoomb suggested a 6pm curfew for men after women were told to change their behaviour following Sarah Everard’s disappearance.
Mr Drakeford was asked by the BBC about the idea of introducing curfews on men in areas where there were concerns of women being assaulted."
Mark Drakeford was making a spur-of-the-moment response to a question. Whether this is an idiocy that he already regrets or reveals a worrying streak of extreme authoritarianism is unclear. Given that the remark came from a Labour leftist you could advance either argument.
Jenny Jones, on the other hand, wasn't being entirely serious with her original remark but was seeking to make a point. Feminists have been proposing male curfews in response to horrors like the Sarah Everard murder for decades. The point, of course, is not to achieve a male curfew but to highlight that a de facto female curfew exists and is profoundly wrong.
Yep her comment was in direct response to claims - including by the Met Police briefing women door to door whilst investigating the murder - that the best way for women to stay safe was for them to stay off the streets. It is such a profoundly wrong message to send that Jenny Jones' response, particularly since she has emphasized it is not meant to be taken seriously as a proposal, seems to me seems entirely proportionate.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
Completely disagree with this, David. You've bought into the "zero COVID" arguments without realising it.
Firstly - one dose of AZ (the backbone of our programme) provides incredible immunity against severe symptoms and hospitalisation, better than the FDA approved J&J vaccine.
Secondly - case R has decoupled from the hospitalisation rate, does it matter if 20k people get it asymptomatically or only get mild symptoms?
Thirdly - your fully immunised figure is way out of date. The first proper unlockdown step is all the way on 19th May, counting two weeks before that takes us to 5th May. That takes us to 17m fully immunised people with both doses that are at the end of their two week waiting period. This is groups 1-5.
Fourth - in April we're expecting a huge uptick in vaccine deliveries from Moderna, Novavax and J&J. There's some talk that the government may dump the 12 week waiting policy for under 50s and bring it down to 6 weeks for Novavax and Moderna. Given the supply situation there's a very, very good chance that every single adult will have received their first dose by the 19th May and will get their second in advance of 21st June.
The critical part of this is giving the majority of under 50s the new vaccines which don't require a 12 week waiting time like AZ. From April we will have two new ones available that give >95% protection against symptoms and 100% protection against severe symptoms, that's a game changer.
You've got Stockholm syndrome wrt lockdown, it's time to let it go.
I hate to say it, but I think David isn’t pleased with how well things are going.
Steady on. I very much tend to Max's side of the argument but David Herdson is very far from an authoritarian on this. His tweets on Covid have been balanced and measured throughout the pandemic and he's often spoken of his frustration at the more pedantic restrictions.
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
I have a lot of time for David and always look forward to his Saturday piece.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
My understanding is that both Pfizer and AZN seem to be 70-80%+ effective at stopping symptomatic COVID infection after one shot.
That’s what I thought, thanks for clearing this up.
That's my understanding - waiting for the real medical types to tear that to shreds....
The extremely high protection against hospitalisation and death is what made the vaccines such a break through.
Herdson is right. 1 shot of AZN provides 76% protection. Lancet publication. Full reference coming
Against death?
"Between April 23 and Dec 6, 2020, 24 422 participants were recruited and vaccinated across the four studies, of whom 17 178 were included in the primary analysis (8597 receiving ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and 8581 receiving control vaccine). The data cutoff for these analyses was Dec 7, 2020. 332 NAAT-positive infections met the primary endpoint of symptomatic infection more than 14 days after the second dose. Overall vaccine efficacy more than 14 days after the second dose was 66·7% (95% CI 57·4–74·0), with 84 (1·0%) cases in the 8597 participants in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group and 248 (2·9%) in the 8581 participants in the control group. There were no hospital admissions for COVID-19 in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group after the initial 21-day exclusion period, and 15 in the control group. 108 (0·9%) of 12 282 participants in the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 group and 127 (1·1%) of 11 962 participants in the control group had serious adverse events. There were seven deaths considered unrelated to vaccination (two in the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 group and five in the control group), including one COVID-19-related death in one participant in the control group. Exploratory analyses showed that vaccine efficacy after a single standard dose of vaccine from day 22 to day 90 after vaccination was 76·0% (59·3–85·9). Our modelling analysis indicated that protection did not wane during this initial 3-month period. Similarly, antibody levels were maintained during this period with minimal waning by day 90 (geometric mean ratio [GMR] 0·66 [95% CI 0·59–0·74]). In the participants who received two standard doses, after the second dose, efficacy was higher in those with a longer prime-boost interval (vaccine efficacy 81·3% [95% CI 60·3–91·2] at ≥12 weeks) than in those with a short interval (vaccine efficacy 55·1% [33·0–69·9] at <6 weeks). These observations are supported by immunogenicity data that showed binding antibody responses more than two-fold higher after an interval of 12 or more weeks compared with an interval of less than 6 weeks in those who were aged 18–55 years (GMR 2·32 [2·01–2·68])."
EDIT - My bold above. It is my understanding that "efficacy" in this context is in preventing COVID19 infection, not death.
EDIT 2 - removed a trailing bracket in the quote of the Lancet URL
Comments
He isn’t, on the whole, very authoritarian in his instincts - indeed, arguably like Johnson, he would have been better in coping with this vaccine had he been more authoritarian. His instinct to have a tight lockdown followed by general release in October, for example, was in no way authoritarian and was a fiasco.
But he is rather scatterbrained.
Gin, of course, is not a new habit for us. Nice young ladies, as my wife was, progressed from babycham, with or without a cherry, to gin and bitter lemon when escorted to classier bars, back in student days.
It’s possible that the existing common cold coronaviruses were as nasty as this one when they first made the jump into humans - but whether they were at that point similarly dangerous for immune naive adults, while being largely innocuous for children, is a matter of conjecture.
I don't know if Zero (targeted) Covid is a good strategy or not at this point. Vaccination has changed the equation massively. On the one hand, it makes it easier to have a Zero-Covid strategy. On the other hand it may make it less necessary.
I do know that if our governments had properly pursued a Zero-Covid strategy, or even a Less-Covid strategy, many of those 125 000 would still be with us today,
Just what kind of a world are these academics living in
The Government though could take steps to eliminate risks to society from Covid. And has. I fully expect that my life will be very much back to normal in the second half of this year. That is down to actions by Government that have removed the material risk - to the point where it has been effectively eliminated from my life. By lockdowns, then vaccination.
That is not just language.
Given that DH also thinks that almost nobody of working age has received a first dose suggests he hasn't researched things very well.
Their effectiveness for personal protection depends on the grade of mask and the care taken by the wearer. It’s simply incorrect to say they do little to protect the wearer.
But if I can continue to avoid the colds I did this winter, I will.
We've got the effects on hospitalisation and death of the vaccines measured:
Which does come in at around 75% on average after 3 weeks, but continues to increase after that.
And we do have to look back quite some distance to see the effects. The vaccine effect on deaths today will have come from infections-that-didn't-happen three weeks ago, with protection being given by vaccines about three weeks earlier than that (more or less, on average, slightly handwavy, etc).
So that's only about half of the Groups 1-4 protected. This will ramp up quite a lot going forwards; it was around the start of the big push to get the Groups 1-4 targets done.
The effects on deaths would be stark:
David's also right (as are others) to focus on hospitalisations and ICU admissions (the dark pink and purple lines respectively); the effects on both of those will be minor so far, but should be climbing about as steeply as they ever get.
Multiply the percentage reduction in each of those lines by 75% (at 3 weeks) climbing to 90-95% (at 3-6 weeks) and you'd get the approximate reductions due to vaccination (and prior infection; don't worry, @DougSeal, I added that in at a conservative estimate of 25% infected and randomly spread by age).
It's very handwavy, but looking at the numbers first-dosed against time, I reckon we're looking at:
Right now: vaccination will be reducing deaths by 40-50% of what we'd otherwise see against cases (that is, we're seeing 100-150 deaths per day right now; that'd be 200-300 or so if we'd not seen those vaccinations). This effect will climb to around 80% reduction (against case loads) by the end of the month. And 90%+ by the end of April.
Hospitalisations reduced by 25-35% against case loads due to vaccinations right now; rising to around 60-65% by the end of the month. And 80%+ by the end of April.
ICE admissions reduced by 10-20% due to vaccinations right now, rising to 40-50% by the end of the month. And 70%+ by the end of April.
Add to this the impairment in transmission from vaccination and infection, and the disease finds it harder to get around to cause the damage in the first place.
That's just my quick-and-dirty handwavy crude spreadsheet stuff, but I think it gives a reasonable idea. It does point to the unlocking being somewhere in the region of the right sort of timetable - the ICU admissions would therefore be the most crucial metric (as they're least and last helped by the vaccination programme due to the age skew of admissions). If they (and hospitalisations) keep either going down or, at worst, flatline, I reckon we'll stay on schedule.
https://twitter.com/remkorteweg/status/1370701725619920896?s=20
Just as you always know something’s about to go wrong in Argentina when they start making lots of noise about the Islas Malvinas.
If, as is often advanced, the actual ideas are popular or not extreme, why persist with the slogan that undermines those ideas? Who cares if the snappy slogan is changed, if the idea is adopted?
https://twitter.com/news24/status/1369626733989814282?s=21
If a message is willfully or otherwise misinterpreted so easily, it is not fit for purpose and should be changed to avoid misunderstandings, not stuck without of, what, some loyalty to a PR slogan?
He might simply be trying to put an interesting counter-argument to us, to fill a debating space that he doesn't currently see being contested. It's very hard to write good thread headers, still less to do them regularly on a Saturday morning every single week.
I'm grateful for the debates he initiates through them. He's always interesting, and he makes you think.
When that is so blatant I don't think it can really be called a storm, since everyone will know that the argument is about something entirely different and the 'storm' is just going through the motions.
Thus Person X gets Policy Y implemented.
Actually, I suggest Buddhists would find it offensive. There are posters about in Thailand urging tourists to be respectful of the religion.
Cue Charlie Hebdo.
They would find it completely silly and ridiculous, but that’s only because it is.
Rather than complaining "there is no such thing as Zero-Covid", people could more usefully spend the thirty seconds explaining the choice. Because there is a choice to be made.
However, right now I want to focus on understanding the facts of the Sarah Everard case and how on earth such an evil man came to be working for the Metropolitan Police in a position of trust, and if there were already suspicions or concerns why nothing was done about it.
As a parent I want to know my child (of any sex) can safely approach or be approached by a police officer without fear of abduction or worse and, right now, understanding how something this awful could happen, and preventing it happen again, is a much bigger concern to me.
If you want Y then demand Z. Y then seems moderate.
Emergency legislation brought in without scrutiny or checks and balances can be easily exploited by the unscrupulous (though whether or not it has been is obviously moot).
Moreover, the CCTV world that greatly enhances our safety in the modern world is surely being undermined by the vast increase in mask usage.
I'm sure their (often compulsory) introduction was a great boon to your average street criminal
You might think that turbo charged racist fascism would conflict with loving all life... but those guys found a way...
Even zero tolerance for Covid is a bloody stupid idea. We need to tolerate and live with Covid, we need to manage it.
And I think how it turns out depends quite a bit on how cautious we are for the next month and a half.
I’d also give credit to government for finally using rapid testing as it should be used. And notably, the organisations using it (schools and businesses) are considerably more likely to be successful in getting those testing positive to isolate than was Dido.
If someone else wants to make an alternative suggestion then let them explain what they mean. Do they mean having a lockdown every time there's even a single case like New Zealand? If not, what do they mean?
It majors on the huge amount of cash (c.£80bn) going in over the next 4 years on new technology and capability upgrades, and the cap on nuclear warheads we hold in reserve will also be raised for deterrence, which seems to be due to proliferation and to send China a message:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/03/12/80bn-equipment-revealed-defence-review-tanks-jets-drones-hovering/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/03/08/josh-rogin-chaos-under-heaven-wuhan-lab-book-excerpt-474322
In this case this crudely translates into:
- "how many deaths, hospitalizations, and cases of disease causing loss of work/discomfort are we willing to accept in return for no disruption of our normal routine";
OR
- "what is the optimal balance between deaths, hospitalizations, and cases of disease causing loss of work/discomfort AND some modicum of disruption?" This latter may be as little as a large percentage of the population voluntarily continuing to wear face masks and practicing greater social distancing in most non-bubble activities than they did prior to the pandemic.
There is no one right answer to this question. Australia and New Zealand have set their risk tolerance far lower than could be acceptable in the UK. That is their choice based on their particular risk profiles.
Since I retired I miss a few things but the constant toad of several hundred emails a day is not one of them.
It quotes a senior government source as being increasingly confident that all over 40s can be offered a vaccine by 4th April.
It also says that after that it is expected to slow down again so won't be able to vaccinate all adults by May 17th when the pubs reopen but should be able to vaccinate all adults well ahead of the July target.
Suggests there will be more pressure from Tory backbenchers to open earlier.
But if someone is going to quote stats on vaccine efficacy, I’d like to see a source. I have not seen it reported that the vaccines (David doesn’t differentiate) cut deaths by only 75% after one shot.
I was under the impression that we just don’t know, but early indications are that they are both excellent. Of course, we don’t know if the protection will ware off before the second doses so there is a reason to be cautious.
I’m not desperate to accelerate the unlocking, but I think the reality is that once the weather picks up, that will be that. The pressure on the NHS will never be what it was thanks to the vaccine, so we’re on a one way journey.
https://www.politico.eu/coronavirus-in-europe/
Http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-manchester-56372118
“we are (not in any way) banning the words 'mother' or 'father'."
Hmm. EU COVID passport will only cover EMA approved vaccines.
https://twitter.com/euronews/status/1370320442989412353
The Lancet study https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00432-3/fulltext) seems to show very, very high protection against admission to hospital or death - close to 100%.
All 3 seem likely to continue the trend (Trump excepted) of a swing to the incumbents.
The extremely high protection against hospitalisation and death is what made the vaccines such a break through.
So a monstrous total for Wales and a below par one for NI so far today.
This chimes with my view of much of the toxic content of social media: winning the argument becomes paramount. The cause itself is secondary. Not in every case of course, but it would explain the zero-covid and defund-the-police slogan pushing.
--AS
Days 22-90 after 1 dose of AZN, 76%
EDIT - My bold above. It is my understanding that "efficacy" in this context is in preventing COVID19 infection, not death.
EDIT 2 - removed a trailing bracket in the quote of the Lancet URL