Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
One last push indeed. In my head I am now planning post-lockdown stuff. I have a week-long business trip to various customers in England. I have a couple of trips south to go for face to face drinks with friends. And for the first time since last February I may get to see my parents.
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
Right. I am sorry to hear that mate.
I think it was Leon who described it as being "forever on the horizon in the near-future". That's spot on. We have to get away from this. It's destroying people's mental health.
I'm somewhat less concerned about my own risk (although not totally unconcerned) than of the risk of passing it on.
And "if you actually catch it in the first place" becomes a near-certainty unless we either hit herd immunity first or maintain restrictions forever, which I don't want at all.
A "near-certainty", is that actually true though? My understanding is that even with the most contagious diseases, a large proportion of the population avoid them, just by luck (but I could be wrong about this).
Nope - the attack rate depends on the level needed for herd immunity for the most infectious diseases. It'd be however many are needed to get R below 1.
I've also noticed that the qcovid calculator takes into account risk of catching it (ie it assumes restrictions are in place; we want there to be no restrictions in place!)
A summary of the situation:
Most of the most vulnerable have had 1 dose of vaccine and Groups 1-4 should be around the point of having had enough time for protection. That reduces their risks considerably, but not to zero (the CFR for over 90s, as Malmesbury shows, has fallen from 40% to about 12%). So vaccination helps considerably, but it does not remove the risk. The question is whether it is at a suitable level (we've gone from 2 in 5 of over 90s who get a positive test dying to about one in eight).
A second dose looks to reduce it still further (the outcome in Israel is encouraging).
The overall reduction in mortality looks to be 85% in the eldest (including all infections rather than just declared cases).
The under-60s either haven't had vaccines yet or haven't had them long enough for protection. These account for half of ICU admissions; the number vulnerable to this is ticking down daily (well, it's not removing vulnerability; it's reducing it considerably, but close enough). Personally, the metric I pay most attention to on the covid dashboard is "number of people in mechanical ventilation beds" as that is a decent proxy for ICU admissions and is the youngest-skewed (and most significant) metric they'll be watching.
In addition, the ICNARC update every week is looking very positive.
It also looks a lot like the opening of schools merely pushed R up to about 0.9 from about 0.8. Lower than one is great. I also think that the opening up of outside won't have a bad effect on R; I'd be content for them to do that now.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
Your link doesn't show that.
There are still enough unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, 30-50 year olds to fill up the NHS if we were to remove all restrictions today.
But, not long to wait until that's no longer the case.
It’s hard to think of anything in the post war period that has done more damage economically, socially and diplomatically to the Western alliance than covid itself and the vaccine procurement crisis.
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
Indeed. The concern is these things take on momentum. First the EU might think the threat would be enough, then that we would not retaliate because that would be bad all around, so they do it, then the Gov feels pushed into it, and so on.
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
The retaliation, *IF* this happens, should be in a non-medical area.
I would wipe out any remaining payment to the EU. Yes, permanently.
"The table shows the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic."
So it's the combined risk of catching and dying (given prevalence during the first peak). Don't know if updated for Kent Covid variant.
Indeed, you are right. In which case it's even more useful. Really brings into sharp relief just how tiny the overall risks are for healthy under-50s.
At long last we have death AND hospitalisation data that controls for UHC – that's been the critical missing factor and has led to endless arguments on here as almost all the available data stratifies for age only.
Interesting.
But you would need to know how likely they think it was for you to catch Covid during that 90-day period to get that data. So you cannot use those figures in that way.
There is a massive anti AstraZeneca vaccine campaign that goes way, way beyond the EU and Brexit.
Do a Google for "adverse reaction AstraZeneca covid vaccine trial". You get a whole bunch of news stories about problems with the AstraZeneca trial, from reputable sources such as Statnews, CNN and others.
Now, switch AstraZeneca for Moderna.
Suddenly there's essentially nothing. A quarter of the number of links. And no stories suggesting any negative trial issues whatsoever.
Bear in mind that this search is for the trial. This is long before the EU had even fucked up vaccine procurement.
Now, Google for "issues AstraZeneca vaccine trial". Again. Tonnes of links: NYTimes. Statnews. And a whole bunch of serious medical sites.
Now, do the same for Modera.
And there's almost nothing.
There is almost no serious anti-Moderna (or even anti-Pfizer) news.
There is tonnes of anti-AstraZeneca.
You're at risk of spoiling the Brexiters' fun..
If you think that is our idea of fun, then it is no surprise you were "beaten by a bus".
Leon isn't the only one who jumps on any anti-EU angle with palpable enthusiasm.
Having a go at a disinformation campaign by Big Pharma isn't nearly so satisfying.
So the attempt to wreck the peace on Ireland, the threats to ban exports, the 8% efficacy and Macron's smears - none of it happened?
WE are trying to wreck the peace in NI. The hardline Unionists are the threat, not the IRA, and they are up in arms about the GB - NI border which WE decided to impose.
What absolute tosh.
NI was used the whole way throiugh the negotiation as a ransom point and still is. This was led by the posh boys Varadkar and Coveney who kept poking the sleeping dogs despite people telling them to leave it. A generation of politicans with no understanding of the North did what they did in the hope of personal advancement and bigger jobs . They fked up and now will fk off leaving their mess behind them for others to clear up.
The border has to go somewhere. We knew that going into Brexit. We knew that it couldn't go onto the Island of Ireland. We offered fanciful technological solutions that we insisted were only a few months away. When offered a delay of a few months to develop and implement them, we did of course refuse - we were lying.
We had an agreement with the EU which would have avoided the Irish Sea border and chose to bin it. This was our choice. We could have then chosen to stay aligned - which we have done with every single "new" trade deal signed by Liz Truss which rolls over the status quo ante. We instead insisted on third country terms - again our choice.
Then the border should be between the EU and the UK. NI is part of the UK.
But no the border doesn't need to be somewhere. You can rely upon trust and self enforcement across the border accepting that may violate the "integrity" of the market.
So we are back to how we have both a fully open border on Ireland and a functioning external EU border. We kept offering up technology solutions like the drones that everyone was laughing at yesterday. But when offered that we wait before implementing our exit for this to be put in place we refused. Why? Because we knew that such a thing was sci-fi.
We *absolutely* could go on trust and self-enforcement. Our standards are the EU's standards. Our animal welfare is their animal welfare. We have literally handcuffed ourselves to the EU by signing all of these continuity EU trade deals. But politically the government need to keep up the pretence of having departed massively, hence our insistence on 3rd country status and all that means.
So yes. Ring the EU. Sign an enlarged alignment and co-operation deal. Reopen the UK to our biggest trading markets. Fix the NI border crisis. But we can't do that as it would be seen by Tory backbenchers as capitulation. They demand the right to have babies even though we can't have babies.
We refused because that's entirely wrong. You don't "wait" for a solution, solutions don't take time, you invent the damned solution and that takes effort and both sides to require it.
When the Government announced the furlough scheme it didn't say "we will do this, once a solution has been invented", they said "we are doing this" and told their team to get on with it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
The right solution to NI was always to say to the EU "we are leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union on this date, now lets work together to develop as many mitigations as possible to keep the border open".
They need skin in the game and your notion that "the UK broke it, the UK can fix it" and that the EU can just stand back and wait for a solution is not how life works.
So why don't we work together? We haven't actually deviated from EEA standards. We haven't actually changed any CU practices. And we aren't going to do either for a Long Time.
Why can't we agree a deal with them where we both mutually drop our checks - the ones we are dropping anyway as we didn't bother to build customs posts or hire customs officers?
You and I both know the reason is politics. We can't admit that despite all the hooey spoken we haven't actually left the side of the dock. It would look Bad for Boris. So instead we have this charade of claiming to be sovereign and different despite having decided to use that sovereignty to keep doing what we were doing before.
We have left the Single Market and Customs Union already. If they want a deal where we both mutually drop our checks, but without us signing up to SM or CU standards, then I have no objection to that. Are they offering that?
Have we asked? I would involve us stating openly that we have maintained all of the standards and customs practices we had before we left the EEA and CU. Whilst it is correct it does rather make a mockery of what Shagger and his government have been saying.
Err no it would not involve us stating that. The whole point of us leaving the EEA and CU is to diverge, what part of that are you not understanding? We've already diverged a bit and are planning to diverge much more.
If we are going to diverge a lot more then why are we signing so many deals that mean we don't diverge? We can enhance EEA standards - thats no problem. Its only if we drop our standards that we would run into trouble and ministers are insistent that no dropping of standards will happen.
We haven't signed a single deal that means we won't diverge. Name one deal that we've signed that prevents divergence please.
None - that wasn't what I said. We've signed a stack of continuity deals. Which at some point in the future if we diverge we will need to replace with genuine new deals. No deal is forever, but signing continuity deals and parading them as new deals shows the slim to none likelihood of them being replaced at any time soon.
No we don't. Our continuity deals with the rest of the world won't need to be replaced when we diverge in the future, they are the the baseline from which we start. We have a continuity deal with Canada but are already in the process of negotiating changes for the future. We have a continuity deal with Turkey. If we sign a new agreement with Canada supplementing and amending our existing continuity deal, then does that void or mean we need to change our deal with Turkey?
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
We haven't done first vaccinations down to 50 yet. That is what the government/NHS is concentrating on for the next month....
EDIT: from the figure for the weekly release for the 18th March -
Been a while since Lab weren’t ahead in Wales, but presumably that’s a subsample rather than someone polling Wales on UK Parliamentary voting intention?
Polling on Welsh Parliament VI might be more useful at this point
Some think Drakeford is seen as a success in Wales but it is Boris who is receiving the vaccine boost
And for those who do not live in Wales, Labour and Drakeford have been an unmitigated disaster especially in education and health
You mean not living in a place contributes to a certain cluelessness about said place? Well I never.
I have lived with Scottish nationalism for most of my 77 years and I leave you with this thought
My dear late Scots father in law, one of the most wonderful, kind, gentle and successful fisherman of his generation who voted labout all his life declared that Scottish nationalism is ugly, wrong and destructive
Funny, my partner’s dad said that Tories were a stain on society. You pays yer money etc.
Were.. that indicates not now...
It indicates that he's been dead for 15 years. I haven't the slightest doubt that his view would remains consistent in the afterlife, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
There is a massive anti AstraZeneca vaccine campaign that goes way, way beyond the EU and Brexit.
Do a Google for "adverse reaction AstraZeneca covid vaccine trial". You get a whole bunch of news stories about problems with the AstraZeneca trial, from reputable sources such as Statnews, CNN and others.
Now, switch AstraZeneca for Moderna.
Suddenly there's essentially nothing. A quarter of the number of links. And no stories suggesting any negative trial issues whatsoever.
Bear in mind that this search is for the trial. This is long before the EU had even fucked up vaccine procurement.
Now, Google for "issues AstraZeneca vaccine trial". Again. Tonnes of links: NYTimes. Statnews. And a whole bunch of serious medical sites.
Now, do the same for Modera.
And there's almost nothing.
There is almost no serious anti-Moderna (or even anti-Pfizer) news.
There is tonnes of anti-AstraZeneca.
You're at risk of spoiling the Brexiters' fun..
If you think that is our idea of fun, then it is no surprise you were "beaten by a bus".
Leon isn't the only one who jumps on any anti-EU angle with palpable enthusiasm.
Having a go at a disinformation campaign by Big Pharma isn't nearly so satisfying.
So the attempt to wreck the peace on Ireland, the threats to ban exports, the 8% efficacy and Macron's smears - none of it happened?
WE are trying to wreck the peace in NI. The hardline Unionists are the threat, not the IRA, and they are up in arms about the GB - NI border which WE decided to impose.
What absolute tosh.
NI was used the whole way throiugh the negotiation as a ransom point and still is. This was led by the posh boys Varadkar and Coveney who kept poking the sleeping dogs despite people telling them to leave it. A generation of politicans with no understanding of the North did what they did in the hope of personal advancement and bigger jobs . They fked up and now will fk off leaving their mess behind them for others to clear up.
The border has to go somewhere. We knew that going into Brexit. We knew that it couldn't go onto the Island of Ireland. We offered fanciful technological solutions that we insisted were only a few months away. When offered a delay of a few months to develop and implement them, we did of course refuse - we were lying.
We had an agreement with the EU which would have avoided the Irish Sea border and chose to bin it. This was our choice. We could have then chosen to stay aligned - which we have done with every single "new" trade deal signed by Liz Truss which rolls over the status quo ante. We instead insisted on third country terms - again our choice.
Then the border should be between the EU and the UK. NI is part of the UK.
But no the border doesn't need to be somewhere. You can rely upon trust and self enforcement across the border accepting that may violate the "integrity" of the market.
So we are back to how we have both a fully open border on Ireland and a functioning external EU border. We kept offering up technology solutions like the drones that everyone was laughing at yesterday. But when offered that we wait before implementing our exit for this to be put in place we refused. Why? Because we knew that such a thing was sci-fi.
We *absolutely* could go on trust and self-enforcement. Our standards are the EU's standards. Our animal welfare is their animal welfare. We have literally handcuffed ourselves to the EU by signing all of these continuity EU trade deals. But politically the government need to keep up the pretence of having departed massively, hence our insistence on 3rd country status and all that means.
So yes. Ring the EU. Sign an enlarged alignment and co-operation deal. Reopen the UK to our biggest trading markets. Fix the NI border crisis. But we can't do that as it would be seen by Tory backbenchers as capitulation. They demand the right to have babies even though we can't have babies.
We refused because that's entirely wrong. You don't "wait" for a solution, solutions don't take time, you invent the damned solution and that takes effort and both sides to require it.
When the Government announced the furlough scheme it didn't say "we will do this, once a solution has been invented", they said "we are doing this" and told their team to get on with it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
The right solution to NI was always to say to the EU "we are leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union on this date, now lets work together to develop as many mitigations as possible to keep the border open".
They need skin in the game and your notion that "the UK broke it, the UK can fix it" and that the EU can just stand back and wait for a solution is not how life works.
So why don't we work together? We haven't actually deviated from EEA standards. We haven't actually changed any CU practices. And we aren't going to do either for a Long Time.
Why can't we agree a deal with them where we both mutually drop our checks - the ones we are dropping anyway as we didn't bother to build customs posts or hire customs officers?
You and I both know the reason is politics. We can't admit that despite all the hooey spoken we haven't actually left the side of the dock. It would look Bad for Boris. So instead we have this charade of claiming to be sovereign and different despite having decided to use that sovereignty to keep doing what we were doing before.
We have left the Single Market and Customs Union already. If they want a deal where we both mutually drop our checks, but without us signing up to SM or CU standards, then I have no objection to that. Are they offering that?
Have we asked? I would involve us stating openly that we have maintained all of the standards and customs practices we had before we left the EEA and CU. Whilst it is correct it does rather make a mockery of what Shagger and his government have been saying.
Err no it would not involve us stating that. The whole point of us leaving the EEA and CU is to diverge, what part of that are you not understanding? We've already diverged a bit and are planning to diverge much more.
If we are going to diverge a lot more then why are we signing so many deals that mean we don't diverge? We can enhance EEA standards - thats no problem. Its only if we drop our standards that we would run into trouble and ministers are insistent that no dropping of standards will happen.
We haven't signed a single deal that means we won't diverge. Name one deal that we've signed that prevents divergence please.
None - that wasn't what I said. We've signed a stack of continuity deals. Which at some point in the future if we diverge we will need to replace with genuine new deals. No deal is forever, but signing continuity deals and parading them as new deals shows the slim to none likelihood of them being replaced at any time soon.
No we don't. Our continuity deals with the rest of the world won't need to be replaced when we diverge in the future, they are the the baseline from which we start. We have a continuity deal with Canada but are already in the process of negotiating changes for the future. We have a continuity deal with Turkey. If we sign a new agreement with Canada supplementing and amending our existing continuity deal, then does that void or mean we need to change our deal with Turkey?
That will depend on its impact on Turkey of course...
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
One last push indeed. In my head I am now planning post-lockdown stuff. I have a week-long business trip to various customers in England. I have a couple of trips south to go for face to face drinks with friends. And for the first time since last February I may get to see my parents.
Not much further to go. Stay strong!
We’ll both be two weeks past second dose by the third week of April. Yesterday we made our first travel booking in well over a year and for the US Memorial Day weekend at the end of May we’ll be flying from JFK to Las Vegas to see my sister-in-law and her family. We’ll be getting to meet our new niece, born a year ago, for the first time.
I feel absurdly emotional seeing an actual entry in the Tripit widget on my phone.
Well, go on then - you have vaccine stockpiled - get on with it
This is Macron's France, they'll have one slot available in the morning, one for the noon and one in the evening. Except Saturday and Sunday. Or if anyone is nearby in a yellow jacket.
Opening supermarkets for one day over easter is the last thing you want to do. Like public transport, shut, or fully open is fine. One day is disastrous.
Well, go on then - you have vaccine stockpiled - get on with it
This is Macron's France, they'll have one slot available in the morning, one for the noon and one in the evening. Except Saturday and Sunday. Or if anyone is nearby in a yellow jacket.
Apparently they've dusted off part of their flu pandemic plan and will create "Vaccinodromes" to perform mass vaccinations.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
We haven't done first vaccinations down to 50 yet. That is what the government/NHS is concentrating on for the next month....
EDIT: from the figure for the weekly release for the 18th March -
All down to 50 are now available to book their appointment, so under 55 really needs replacing with an under 50 and 50-54 category.
Three weeks after the under 50s are done there's really no justification for indoors restrictions being greater than they were last July.
They are adding age categories each tease, it seems. I am quite sure that in the next update - due Thursday - they will have a category added for 50-54.
There is a massive anti AstraZeneca vaccine campaign that goes way, way beyond the EU and Brexit.
Do a Google for "adverse reaction AstraZeneca covid vaccine trial". You get a whole bunch of news stories about problems with the AstraZeneca trial, from reputable sources such as Statnews, CNN and others.
Now, switch AstraZeneca for Moderna.
Suddenly there's essentially nothing. A quarter of the number of links. And no stories suggesting any negative trial issues whatsoever.
Bear in mind that this search is for the trial. This is long before the EU had even fucked up vaccine procurement.
Now, Google for "issues AstraZeneca vaccine trial". Again. Tonnes of links: NYTimes. Statnews. And a whole bunch of serious medical sites.
Now, do the same for Modera.
And there's almost nothing.
There is almost no serious anti-Moderna (or even anti-Pfizer) news.
There is tonnes of anti-AstraZeneca.
You're at risk of spoiling the Brexiters' fun..
If you think that is our idea of fun, then it is no surprise you were "beaten by a bus".
Leon isn't the only one who jumps on any anti-EU angle with palpable enthusiasm.
Having a go at a disinformation campaign by Big Pharma isn't nearly so satisfying.
So the attempt to wreck the peace on Ireland, the threats to ban exports, the 8% efficacy and Macron's smears - none of it happened?
WE are trying to wreck the peace in NI. The hardline Unionists are the threat, not the IRA, and they are up in arms about the GB - NI border which WE decided to impose.
What absolute tosh.
NI was used the whole way throiugh the negotiation as a ransom point and still is. This was led by the posh boys Varadkar and Coveney who kept poking the sleeping dogs despite people telling them to leave it. A generation of politicans with no understanding of the North did what they did in the hope of personal advancement and bigger jobs . They fked up and now will fk off leaving their mess behind them for others to clear up.
The border has to go somewhere. We knew that going into Brexit. We knew that it couldn't go onto the Island of Ireland. We offered fanciful technological solutions that we insisted were only a few months away. When offered a delay of a few months to develop and implement them, we did of course refuse - we were lying.
We had an agreement with the EU which would have avoided the Irish Sea border and chose to bin it. This was our choice. We could have then chosen to stay aligned - which we have done with every single "new" trade deal signed by Liz Truss which rolls over the status quo ante. We instead insisted on third country terms - again our choice.
Then the border should be between the EU and the UK. NI is part of the UK.
But no the border doesn't need to be somewhere. You can rely upon trust and self enforcement across the border accepting that may violate the "integrity" of the market.
So we are back to how we have both a fully open border on Ireland and a functioning external EU border. We kept offering up technology solutions like the drones that everyone was laughing at yesterday. But when offered that we wait before implementing our exit for this to be put in place we refused. Why? Because we knew that such a thing was sci-fi.
We *absolutely* could go on trust and self-enforcement. Our standards are the EU's standards. Our animal welfare is their animal welfare. We have literally handcuffed ourselves to the EU by signing all of these continuity EU trade deals. But politically the government need to keep up the pretence of having departed massively, hence our insistence on 3rd country status and all that means.
So yes. Ring the EU. Sign an enlarged alignment and co-operation deal. Reopen the UK to our biggest trading markets. Fix the NI border crisis. But we can't do that as it would be seen by Tory backbenchers as capitulation. They demand the right to have babies even though we can't have babies.
We refused because that's entirely wrong. You don't "wait" for a solution, solutions don't take time, you invent the damned solution and that takes effort and both sides to require it.
When the Government announced the furlough scheme it didn't say "we will do this, once a solution has been invented", they said "we are doing this" and told their team to get on with it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
The right solution to NI was always to say to the EU "we are leaving the EU Single Market and Customs Union on this date, now lets work together to develop as many mitigations as possible to keep the border open".
They need skin in the game and your notion that "the UK broke it, the UK can fix it" and that the EU can just stand back and wait for a solution is not how life works.
So why don't we work together? We haven't actually deviated from EEA standards. We haven't actually changed any CU practices. And we aren't going to do either for a Long Time.
Why can't we agree a deal with them where we both mutually drop our checks - the ones we are dropping anyway as we didn't bother to build customs posts or hire customs officers?
You and I both know the reason is politics. We can't admit that despite all the hooey spoken we haven't actually left the side of the dock. It would look Bad for Boris. So instead we have this charade of claiming to be sovereign and different despite having decided to use that sovereignty to keep doing what we were doing before.
We have left the Single Market and Customs Union already. If they want a deal where we both mutually drop our checks, but without us signing up to SM or CU standards, then I have no objection to that. Are they offering that?
Have we asked? I would involve us stating openly that we have maintained all of the standards and customs practices we had before we left the EEA and CU. Whilst it is correct it does rather make a mockery of what Shagger and his government have been saying.
Err no it would not involve us stating that. The whole point of us leaving the EEA and CU is to diverge, what part of that are you not understanding? We've already diverged a bit and are planning to diverge much more.
If we are going to diverge a lot more then why are we signing so many deals that mean we don't diverge? We can enhance EEA standards - thats no problem. Its only if we drop our standards that we would run into trouble and ministers are insistent that no dropping of standards will happen.
We haven't signed a single deal that means we won't diverge. Name one deal that we've signed that prevents divergence please.
None - that wasn't what I said. We've signed a stack of continuity deals. Which at some point in the future if we diverge we will need to replace with genuine new deals. No deal is forever, but signing continuity deals and parading them as new deals shows the slim to none likelihood of them being replaced at any time soon.
No we don't. Our continuity deals with the rest of the world won't need to be replaced when we diverge in the future, they are the the baseline from which we start. We have a continuity deal with Canada but are already in the process of negotiating changes for the future. We have a continuity deal with Turkey. If we sign a new agreement with Canada supplementing and amending our existing continuity deal, then does that void or mean we need to change our deal with Turkey?
That will depend on its impact on Turkey of course...
If we sign a deal allowing eg greater mutual recognition of services etc which is what's being talked about, or if we join the CPTPP in Asia Pacific or we [a plethora of other options here] the impact on Turkey will be minimal.
Governments signing a new deal with one country doesn't void all its pre-existing deals. If it did countries would only have a single deal at a time, not dozens of deals.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
No, it estimates the risk of catching it and then dying from it (or being hospitalised), not the risk IF you catch it. For that, they assume that the number of people catching it and the outcome if they do are similar to the first peak. I'm not sure how useful that is, really; your absolute risk if the virus was allowed to run riot would be considerably higher.
FWIW, for me it gave 1 in 2577 for death, and 1 in 943 for hospitalisation (better than average for my age, since I'm skinny and in good general health). And that's before taking vaccination into account, which probably reduces both by a factor of ten. Pretty encouraging!
Where do you get the factor of ten from post vaccination? It "feels" a sensible estimate yet the trials are generally saying it is 100% effective for avoiding death and hospitalisation? Is there a qualification in that 100% effective that I am misunderstanding or are you using a cautious estimate?
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
The retaliation, *IF* this happens, should be in a non-medical area.
I would wipe out any remaining payment to the EU. Yes, permanently.
Agreed. Strong, almost disproportionate, retaliation but phrased “more in sorrow than anger” and flagging that we won’t dick about with vaccines or their components. Make it cost them money, not lives.
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
The retaliation, *IF* this happens, should be in a non-medical area.
I would wipe out any remaining payment to the EU. Yes, permanently.
Agreed. Strong, almost disproportionate, retaliation but phrased “more in sorrow than anger” and flagging that we won’t dick about with vaccines or their components. Make it cost them money, not lives.
Absolutely but not money directly, it should be something retaliatory that costs them money.
The UK has never reneged on a debt. We should not start now.
Alternatively invoke Article 16 in retaliation and say we are not removing the invocation until a solution is arranged to prevent any Irish Sea border at all.
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
The retaliation, *IF* this happens, should be in a non-medical area.
I would wipe out any remaining payment to the EU. Yes, permanently.
Agreed. Strong, almost disproportionate, retaliation but phrased “more in sorrow than anger” and flagging that we won’t dick about with vaccines or their components. Make it cost them money, not lives.
Absolutely but not money directly, it should be something retaliatory that costs them money.
The UK has never reneged on a debt. We should not start now.
Alternatively invoke Article 16 in retaliation and say we are not removing the invocation until a solution is arranged to prevent any Irish Sea border at all.
I mean, the other option is a sudden announcement of a massive corporation tax allowance for medical R&D, and a complete relaxation of all planning laws for pharmaceutical sites.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
One last push indeed. In my head I am now planning post-lockdown stuff. I have a week-long business trip to various customers in England. I have a couple of trips south to go for face to face drinks with friends. And for the first time since last February I may get to see my parents.
Not much further to go. Stay strong!
We’ll both be two weeks past second dose by the third week of April. Yesterday we made our first travel booking in well over a year and for the US Memorial Day weekend at the end of May we’ll be flying from JFK to Las Vegas to see my sister-in-law and her family. We’ll be getting to meet our new niece, born a year ago, for the first time.
I feel absurdly emotional seeing an actual entry in the Tripit widget on my phone.
I moved some suitcases in the loft the other day, and got unnecessarily emotional at seeing the old travel tags....
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
Average life expectancy in 2015 in the non-diabetic population is around 74.8 years with longer life expectancy for the female than male population (78 years vs 71) (Table 2). Patients with Type 1 DM and with Type 2 DM are expected to have an average life of 70.96 and 75.19 years at the end of observed period.
.. we’re on the cusp of a full blown trade war with Europe, aren’t we?
The thing is, we settled on a goods only deal with a partner we run a trade deficit with, and to whom volumes have been cut by the pandemic as well as Brexit disruption. At this stage we don’t have a lot to lose.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
Your link doesn't show that.
There are still enough unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, 30-50 year olds to fill up the NHS if we were to remove all restrictions today.
But, not long to wait until that's no longer the case.
Sure, I'm not advocating opening up today though. I'm kind of where Andy is – roadmap about right, but outdoor hospitality seems to conservative. Shame it couldn't open for the Easter weekend.
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
The retaliation, *IF* this happens, should be in a non-medical area.
I would wipe out any remaining payment to the EU. Yes, permanently.
Agreed. Strong, almost disproportionate, retaliation but phrased “more in sorrow than anger” and flagging that we won’t dick about with vaccines or their components. Make it cost them money, not lives.
Absolutely but not money directly, it should be something retaliatory that costs them money.
The UK has never reneged on a debt. We should not start now.
Alternatively invoke Article 16 in retaliation and say we are not removing the invocation until a solution is arranged to prevent any Irish Sea border at all.
I mean, the other option is a sudden announcement of a massive corporation tax allowance for medical R&D, and a complete relaxation of all planning laws for pharmaceutical sites.
I would hope that HMG would have had discussions with Pfizer about the actions that could be taken which would enable them to deliver vaccines from somewhere else if not from Belgium.
There has been some time to prepare a contingency plan - if not nearly enough to create a new plant from scratch.
Opening supermarkets for one day over easter is the last thing you want to do. Like public transport, shut, or fully open is fine. One day is disastrous.
I agree with that, but worth noting that supermarkets are anyway closed on Sundays, and are closed Easter Monday and Good Friday, so it's just the Thursday that they spent the whole night arguing about whether to close or not.
.. we’re on the cusp of a full blown trade war with Europe, aren’t we?
The thing is, we settled on a goods only deal with a partner we run a trade deficit with, and to whom volumes have been cut by the pandemic as well as Brexit disruption. At this stage we don’t have a lot to lose.
I guess not. Though I would hope we’d have enough alternatives in terms of supply chain to get products in from elsewhere..
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
Your link doesn't show that.
There are still enough unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, 30-50 year olds to fill up the NHS if we were to remove all restrictions today.
But, not long to wait until that's no longer the case.
Sure, I'm not advocating opening up today though. I'm kind of where Andy is – roadmap about right, but outdoor hospitality seems to conservative. Shame it couldn't open for the Easter weekend.
Yes. Weren't we all saying the same about the outside risks last May-ish?
"The period of "excess deaths" which has characterised the second wave of COVID-19 has now come to an end, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
For the first time since September, the number of people dying of all causes in England and Wales has dropped beneath the five-year average.
According to the figures, some 10,987 people died in the week ending 12 March, which was 511 below the historical average for that week, the 10th week of the year."
"The table shows the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic."
So it's the combined risk of catching and dying (given prevalence during the first peak). Don't know if updated for Kent Covid variant.
Indeed, you are right. In which case it's even more useful. Really brings into sharp relief just how tiny the overall risks are for healthy under-50s.
At long last we have death AND hospitalisation data that controls for UHC – that's been the critical missing factor and has led to endless arguments on here as almost all the available data stratifies for age only.
Interesting.
But you would need to know how likely they think it was for you to catch Covid during that 90-day period to get that data. So you cannot use those figures in that way.
It's better than any other data we have, given that you can put in your specific details and get a risk estimate, which is what most people want. Much of the analysis so far has been stultified by the fact that very few data sets (other than the NHS deaths update) control for UHC.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
Right. I am sorry to hear that mate.
I think it was Leon who described it as being "forever on the horizon in the near-future". That's spot on. We have to get away from this. It's destroying people's mental health.
It's always been three months away, ever since the start of this little adventure last March. Though in fairness the credibility of that three-months-away has been increasing,
@Gallowgate , not sure how glib you're being about depression and loneliness, but if the way you are feeling is anything worse than 'harumph', and you haven't already, please see a doctor. I saw a doctor for depression last October after being hectored, rightly, to do so for some time by my wife. I had been reluctant to do so because, well, the way you feel always feels rational, and the way I felt felt to me like a rational reaction to the world turning to shit, human interaction outside my house drying up completely, my children's childhoods and future being taken away from them and the country descending into a culture war on three simultaneous axes*. It felt completely rational to spend hours of each day wishing I was dead. Working out how I could kill myself in the way which would least incovenience my family and anyone who had to discover my body felt like an important problem to be working on. Hanging around on motorway bridges trying to work out whether the drop would kill me cleanly and whether I could identify a spot on the hard shoulder which wouldn't disrupt traffic seemed like a sensible response to life as it was panning out. It's really, really hard to talk about this stuff with a doctor (or indeed anyone). I'm so glad a did. He prescribed me some anti-depressants (Sertraline) - they're meant to take a few weeks to work, but in my case I actually felt better within a few hours. Not happy. But not suicidal. Not a visceral feeling of dread in my gut. And not feeling like this after I had been feeling like this for, what, months, so contiunously that I had forgotten what it felt like NOT to wake up and feel the dread in my stomach felt, by comparison, like the biggest high I had ever experienced. It wasn't, really - it was just feeling OK. But feeling OK is how you should be feeling. I'm not saying I'm feeling great about the world now. I'm still - intellectually - cross about my children not being able to see their grandparents and about all the other what I consider needless restrictions we are living under; I'm in believe-it-when-I-see-it mode about the country opening up again, and I am, of course, furious that the EU appears to be trying to kill and impoverish the British. But I feel these things intellectually, rather than viscerally; and I can hold those thoughts in my head at the same time as taking pleasure in the emerging spring, in a good meal, in the smiles of my children (which, last October, would just break my heart for reminding me of all they were missing out on). Life is not, yet, great. But I am not suffering.
TLDR - your opinions of the world aren't wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to suffer. Please consider, if you even suspect you might need to, seeing a doctor.
*pro-lockdown vs anti-lockdown, woke v no-woke, Brexit v Remain
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
.. we’re on the cusp of a full blown trade war with Europe, aren’t we?
The thing is, we settled on a goods only deal with a partner we run a trade deficit with, and to whom volumes have been cut by the pandemic as well as Brexit disruption. At this stage we don’t have a lot to lose.
I guess not. Though I would hope we’d have enough alternatives in terms of supply chain to get products in from elsewhere..
Providing that we can find someone who has mountains of unsold product elsewhere in the world and we are happy to pay more for less, then sure it can be done.
More of a problem is our own supply chain. We fish a load of species that we don't eat but Europeans don't. Fishing doesn't pay the bills unless we can export. Same with farming where we export both older animals and carcasses. Or we used to. Won't take very long before farming either needs huge subsidies or starts to go to the wall.
"Just buy / sell from somewhere else" is a great slogan but of no use in reality.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
Right. I am sorry to hear that mate.
I think it was Leon who described it as being "forever on the horizon in the near-future". That's spot on. We have to get away from this. It's destroying people's mental health.
It's always been three months away, ever since the start of this little adventure last March. Though in fairness the credibility of that three-months-away has been increasing,
@Gallowgate , not sure how glib you're being about depression and loneliness, but if the way you are feeling is anything worse than 'harumph', and you haven't already, please see a doctor. I saw a doctor for depression last October after being hectored, rightly, to do so for some time by my wife. I had been reluctant to do so because, well, the way you feel always feels rational, and the way I felt felt to me like a rational reaction to the world turning to shit, human interaction outside my house drying up completely, my children's childhoods and future being taken away from them and the country descending into a culture war on three simultaneous axes*. It felt completely rational to spend hours of each day wishing I was dead. Working out how I could kill myself in the way which would least incovenience my family and anyone who had to discover my body felt like an important problem to be working on. Hanging around on motorway bridges trying to work out whether the drop would kill me cleanly and whether I could identify a spot on the hard shoulder which wouldn't disrupt traffic seemed like a sensible response to life as it was panning out. It's really, really hard to talk about this stuff with a doctor (or indeed anyone). I'm so glad a did. He prescribed me some anti-depressants (Sertraline) - they're meant to take a few weeks to work, but in my case I actually felt better within a few hours. Not happy. But not suicidal. Not a visceral feeling of dread in my gut. And not feeling like this after I had been feeling like this for, what, months, so contiunously that I had forgotten what it felt like NOT to wake up and feel the dread in my stomach felt, by comparison, like the biggest high I had ever experienced. It wasn't, really - it was just feeling OK. But feeling OK is how you should be feeling. I'm not saying I'm feeling great about the world now. I'm still - intellectually - cross about my children not being able to see their grandparents and about all the other what I consider needless restrictions we are living under; I'm in believe-it-when-I-see-it mode about the country opening up again, and I am, of course, furious that the EU appears to be trying to kill and impoverish the British. But I feel these things intellectually, rather than viscerally; and I can hold those thoughts in my head at the same time as taking pleasure in the emerging spring, in a good meal, in the smiles of my children (which, last October, would just break my heart for reminding me of all they were missing out on). Life is not, yet, great. But I am not suffering.
TLDR - your opinions of the world aren't wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to suffer. Please consider, if you even suspect you might need to, seeing a doctor.
*pro-lockdown vs anti-lockdown, woke v no-woke, Brexit v Remain
"The table shows the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic."
So it's the combined risk of catching and dying (given prevalence during the first peak). Don't know if updated for Kent Covid variant.
Indeed, you are right. In which case it's even more useful. Really brings into sharp relief just how tiny the overall risks are for healthy under-50s.
At long last we have death AND hospitalisation data that controls for UHC – that's been the critical missing factor and has led to endless arguments on here as almost all the available data stratifies for age only.
Interesting.
But you would need to know how likely they think it was for you to catch Covid during that 90-day period to get that data. So you cannot use those figures in that way.
It's better than any other data we have, given that you can put in your specific details and get a risk estimate, which is what most people want. Much of the analysis so far has been stultified by the fact that very few data sets (other than the NHS deaths update) control for UHC.
It's no good if it's about an order of magnitude out, though, possibly more due to Kent Covid and other assumptions, as it would be consistently misleading.
"The table shows the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic."
So it's the combined risk of catching and dying (given prevalence during the first peak). Don't know if updated for Kent Covid variant.
Indeed, you are right. In which case it's even more useful. Really brings into sharp relief just how tiny the overall risks are for healthy under-50s.
At long last we have death AND hospitalisation data that controls for UHC – that's been the critical missing factor and has led to endless arguments on here as almost all the available data stratifies for age only.
Interesting.
But you would need to know how likely they think it was for you to catch Covid during that 90-day period to get that data. So you cannot use those figures in that way.
It's better than any other data we have, given that you can put in your specific details and get a risk estimate, which is what most people want. Much of the analysis so far has been stultified by the fact that very few data sets (other than the NHS deaths update) control for UHC.
I've had a look and compared to the meta-studies on calculating IFR for the same age, and it seems to assume somewhere between a 1-in-50 and 1-in-48 chance of infection (and multiplies this by the risk factor from infection to get your absolute risk).
Accordingly, multiply the numbers by about 50 to get your risk-of-infected.
(The difference between the hospitalisation and death risk can also be used - so while someone of age 48 has about a 0.18% chance of death, they have about 12 times that chance of being hospitalised - around 2.16%.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
Your link doesn't show that.
There are still enough unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, 30-50 year olds to fill up the NHS if we were to remove all restrictions today.
But, not long to wait until that's no longer the case.
Sure, I'm not advocating opening up today though. I'm kind of where Andy is – roadmap about right, but outdoor hospitality seems to conservative. Shame it couldn't open for the Easter weekend.
Yes. Weren't we all saying the same about the outside risks last May-ish?
Indeed. There seems to be a good deal of evidence that the outdoor risk is pretty bloody low.
This is why I expect the Cons to win Hartlepool. And why, if I'm wrong, it will for me be a sign that GE24 will be competitive and Labour are in with a good chance of forming the next government.
Some people thought I was spinning with that, trying to pretend a turd was chocolate, but I was perfectly serious.
This byelection up there in a few weeks is going to be such a tell either way.
No, it estimates the risk of catching it and then dying from it (or being hospitalised), not the risk IF you catch it. For that, they assume that the number of people catching it and the outcome if they do are similar to the first peak. I'm not sure how useful that is, really; your absolute risk if the virus was allowed to run riot would be considerably higher.
FWIW, for me it gave 1 in 2577 for death, and 1 in 943 for hospitalisation (better than average for my age, since I'm skinny and in good general health). And that's before taking vaccination into account, which probably reduces both by a factor of ten. Pretty encouraging!
Where do you get the factor of ten from post vaccination? It "feels" a sensible estimate yet the trials are generally saying it is 100% effective for avoiding death and hospitalisation? Is there a qualification in that 100% effective that I am misunderstanding or are you using a cautious estimate?
I was using a cautious estimate.
Those claims of '100% effective' should be treated with some caution; they are generally based on 0 deaths (or hospitalisations) showing up in the vaccination group of the trial, but if the number of deaths in the placebo groups is small, the error bars on the downside will be quite big. In the Israeli, English and Scottish real-world data, the vaccines haven't been 100% effective on deaths/hospitalisations, but they have been very good - at least 90% seems a reasonable cautious estimate once fully vaccinated. It may well be even better.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
.. we’re on the cusp of a full blown trade war with Europe, aren’t we?
The thing is, we settled on a goods only deal with a partner we run a trade deficit with, and to whom volumes have been cut by the pandemic as well as Brexit disruption. At this stage we don’t have a lot to lose.
I guess not. Though I would hope we’d have enough alternatives in terms of supply chain to get products in from elsewhere..
Providing that we can find someone who has mountains of unsold product elsewhere in the world and we are happy to pay more for less, then sure it can be done.
More of a problem is our own supply chain. We fish a load of species that we don't eat but Europeans don't. Fishing doesn't pay the bills unless we can export. Same with farming where we export both older animals and carcasses. Or we used to. Won't take very long before farming either needs huge subsidies or starts to go to the wall.
"Just buy / sell from somewhere else" is a great slogan but of no use in reality.
So be it.
Its only a small portion of GDP. Isn't that the line?
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
I'm not saying you are wrong at all, I just want to understand it. Under-50s with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI. As the Oxford app I linked to shows, the risk of healthy under-50s being hospitalised is pretty darned low. So we are now already perhaps beyond the point where high-risk people remain unvaccinated?
Your link doesn't show that.
There are still enough unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, 30-50 year olds to fill up the NHS if we were to remove all restrictions today.
But, not long to wait until that's no longer the case.
Sure, I'm not advocating opening up today though. I'm kind of where Andy is – roadmap about right, but outdoor hospitality seems to conservative. Shame it couldn't open for the Easter weekend.
The Government were never going to take any risks with super-spreader events over Easter, even though the risks are now massively reduced. There will be some folk ahead of the game on ending lockdown, especially if the weather over Easter is clement. (Currently saying sunny intervals and dry, although with a cold NE wind.)
I expect that once Easter is done, there will be voices loudly pointing to the very low death rates, the tumbling hospital admissions and saying "speed it up...." Politicians v scientists will be quite the battle.
For those who don't know - one of the critical points in the start of WWI was the invasion of Belgium. The Germans had convinced themselves that they had to invade Belgium to invade France successfully. Because this was so vital to their plans, they had convinced themselves that the British government would ignore the treaty violation.
The British government was divided - up to an invasion of Belgium. If Belgium was not invaded, half the cabinet would not vote for war. If Belgium was invaded, then it was 100%. This was because the Belgian treaty was universally seen, in Britain, as part of the foundations of the European order.
Edward Grey, the Foreign Sec. had a meeting with the German Ambassador. If he had stated unequivocally that invading Belgium = War, then the Germans (especially the Kaiser) *might* have stopped... The problem was that Grey used too much diplomatic language.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
Foxy is wrong, I think.
He's calculated that not by doing any form of serious analysis of the individuals who have died matching their personal life expectancy with their death, but instead by averaging averages and matching one average with another. Life doesn't work that way.
The average life lost only matches the average life left, because that is how it was calculated by definition.
Put in this way, a fifth of all deaths have been from Care Homes. The median life expectancy of someone going into a Care Home is less than 12 months, not a decade. But if you just look at their age and use an average you'll say ten years not less than 12 months.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
No person can ever die on the average day for doing so.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
I'd heard that the average age at death of people dying from covid was greater than the average age at death of the population in general. This doesn't seem to tally with an average of ten years lost?
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
Right. I am sorry to hear that mate.
I think it was Leon who described it as being "forever on the horizon in the near-future". That's spot on. We have to get away from this. It's destroying people's mental health.
It's always been three months away, ever since the start of this little adventure last March. Though in fairness the credibility of that three-months-away has been increasing,
@Gallowgate , not sure how glib you're being about depression and loneliness, but if the way you are feeling is anything worse than 'harumph', and you haven't already, please see a doctor. I saw a doctor for depression last October after being hectored, rightly, to do so for some time by my wife. I had been reluctant to do so because, well, the way you feel always feels rational, and the way I felt felt to me like a rational reaction to the world turning to shit, human interaction outside my house drying up completely, my children's childhoods and future being taken away from them and the country descending into a culture war on three simultaneous axes*. It felt completely rational to spend hours of each day wishing I was dead. Working out how I could kill myself in the way which would least incovenience my family and anyone who had to discover my body felt like an important problem to be working on. Hanging around on motorway bridges trying to work out whether the drop would kill me cleanly and whether I could identify a spot on the hard shoulder which wouldn't disrupt traffic seemed like a sensible response to life as it was panning out. It's really, really hard to talk about this stuff with a doctor (or indeed anyone). I'm so glad a did. He prescribed me some anti-depressants (Sertraline) - they're meant to take a few weeks to work, but in my case I actually felt better within a few hours. Not happy. But not suicidal. Not a visceral feeling of dread in my gut. And not feeling like this after I had been feeling like this for, what, months, so contiunously that I had forgotten what it felt like NOT to wake up and feel the dread in my stomach felt, by comparison, like the biggest high I had ever experienced. It wasn't, really - it was just feeling OK. But feeling OK is how you should be feeling. I'm not saying I'm feeling great about the world now. I'm still - intellectually - cross about my children not being able to see their grandparents and about all the other what I consider needless restrictions we are living under; I'm in believe-it-when-I-see-it mode about the country opening up again, and I am, of course, furious that the EU appears to be trying to kill and impoverish the British. But I feel these things intellectually, rather than viscerally; and I can hold those thoughts in my head at the same time as taking pleasure in the emerging spring, in a good meal, in the smiles of my children (which, last October, would just break my heart for reminding me of all they were missing out on). Life is not, yet, great. But I am not suffering.
TLDR - your opinions of the world aren't wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to suffer. Please consider, if you even suspect you might need to, seeing a doctor.
*pro-lockdown vs anti-lockdown, woke v no-woke, Brexit v Remain
A brave and useful post.
You are an example - it is not weakness, it is strength to seek medical help when it is required.
This is why I expect the Cons to win Hartlepool. And why, if I'm wrong, it will for me be a sign that GE24 will be competitive and Labour are in with a good chance of forming the next government.
Some people thought I was spinning with that, trying to pretend a turd was chocolate, but I was perfectly serious.
This byelection up there in a few weeks is going to be such a tell either way.
Hartlepool is a good test.
And the Leaver seats in NE Wales in the Senedd (Wrexham, Clwyd South, Alyn & Deeside, Delyn, Vale of Clwyd) -- all currently held by Labour, but all vulnerable and mainly Tory-held at Westminster -- are another good test.
As I am now expecting the Vaccine War to be fully raging by May, I think Labour will find it heavy going.
This is why I expect the Cons to win Hartlepool. And why, if I'm wrong, it will for me be a sign that GE24 will be competitive and Labour are in with a good chance of forming the next government.
Some people thought I was spinning with that, trying to pretend a turd was chocolate, but I was perfectly serious.
This byelection up there in a few weeks is going to be such a tell either way.
Except that Lab won Hartlepool 16 months ago when such figures would have been comparable.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
I'd heard that the average age at death of people dying from covid was greater than the average age at death of the population in general. This doesn't seem to tally with an average of ten years lost?
No, I think that's fine. Remember, if you make it to the average life expectancy, you will on average live quite a lot longer (i.e. a lot of people don't make it to the average).
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
Foxy is wrong, I think.
He's calculated that not by doing any form of serious analysis of the individuals who have died matching their personal life expectancy with their death, but instead by averaging averages and matching one average with another. Life doesn't work that way.
The average life lost only matches the average life left, because that is how it was calculated by definition.
Put in this way, a fifth of all deaths have been from Care Homes. The median life expectancy of someone going into a Care Home is less than 12 months, not a decade. But if you just look at their age and use an average you'll say ten years not less than 12 months.
To be fair, I think @Foxy was citing a paper rather than doing his own calculations.
I'll be honest, I'm sceptical of the 10 years figure, but there are some on here who were insistent that that's what the data show.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
That would be nice. My depression and loneliness is getting worse and worse now.
One last push...
Right. I am sorry to hear that mate.
I think it was Leon who described it as being "forever on the horizon in the near-future". That's spot on. We have to get away from this. It's destroying people's mental health.
It's always been three months away, ever since the start of this little adventure last March. Though in fairness the credibility of that three-months-away has been increasing,
@Gallowgate , not sure how glib you're being about depression and loneliness, but if the way you are feeling is anything worse than 'harumph', and you haven't already, please see a doctor. I saw a doctor for depression last October after being hectored, rightly, to do so for some time by my wife. I had been reluctant to do so because, well, the way you feel always feels rational, and the way I felt felt to me like a rational reaction to the world turning to shit, human interaction outside my house drying up completely, my children's childhoods and future being taken away from them and the country descending into a culture war on three simultaneous axes*. It felt completely rational to spend hours of each day wishing I was dead. Working out how I could kill myself in the way which would least incovenience my family and anyone who had to discover my body felt like an important problem to be working on. Hanging around on motorway bridges trying to work out whether the drop would kill me cleanly and whether I could identify a spot on the hard shoulder which wouldn't disrupt traffic seemed like a sensible response to life as it was panning out. It's really, really hard to talk about this stuff with a doctor (or indeed anyone). I'm so glad a did. He prescribed me some anti-depressants (Sertraline) - they're meant to take a few weeks to work, but in my case I actually felt better within a few hours. Not happy. But not suicidal. Not a visceral feeling of dread in my gut. And not feeling like this after I had been feeling like this for, what, months, so contiunously that I had forgotten what it felt like NOT to wake up and feel the dread in my stomach felt, by comparison, like the biggest high I had ever experienced. It wasn't, really - it was just feeling OK. But feeling OK is how you should be feeling. I'm not saying I'm feeling great about the world now. I'm still - intellectually - cross about my children not being able to see their grandparents and about all the other what I consider needless restrictions we are living under; I'm in believe-it-when-I-see-it mode about the country opening up again, and I am, of course, furious that the EU appears to be trying to kill and impoverish the British. But I feel these things intellectually, rather than viscerally; and I can hold those thoughts in my head at the same time as taking pleasure in the emerging spring, in a good meal, in the smiles of my children (which, last October, would just break my heart for reminding me of all they were missing out on). Life is not, yet, great. But I am not suffering.
TLDR - your opinions of the world aren't wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to suffer. Please consider, if you even suspect you might need to, seeing a doctor.
*pro-lockdown vs anti-lockdown, woke v no-woke, Brexit v Remain
A brave and heartfelt post.
Indeed and as someone whose eldest son is currently having his 14th electroconvulsive treatment in Canada for his PTSD and mental health issues the subject is not one to be casually dismissed, but each and everyone suffering some form of mental health should see their doctor without delay as help is available and the earlier the better, which is something I wish my eldest had done much earlier than he did
"The table shows the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic."
So it's the combined risk of catching and dying (given prevalence during the first peak). Don't know if updated for Kent Covid variant.
Indeed, you are right. In which case it's even more useful. Really brings into sharp relief just how tiny the overall risks are for healthy under-50s.
At long last we have death AND hospitalisation data that controls for UHC – that's been the critical missing factor and has led to endless arguments on here as almost all the available data stratifies for age only.
Interesting.
But you would need to know how likely they think it was for you to catch Covid during that 90-day period to get that data. So you cannot use those figures in that way.
It's better than any other data we have, given that you can put in your specific details and get a risk estimate, which is what most people want. Much of the analysis so far has been stultified by the fact that very few data sets (other than the NHS deaths update) control for UHC.
I've had a look and compared to the meta-studies on calculating IFR for the same age, and it seems to assume somewhere between a 1-in-50 and 1-in-48 chance of infection (and multiplies this by the risk factor from infection to get your absolute risk).
Accordingly, multiply the numbers by about 50 to get your risk-of-infected.
(The difference between the hospitalisation and death risk can also be used - so while someone of age 48 has about a 0.18% chance of death, they have about 12 times that chance of being hospitalised - around 2.16%.
Multiplying by 50 gives me a 1-in-40 chance of being hospitalised.
Not likely to receive my first dose until May (I'm 40).
"The table shows the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic."
So it's the combined risk of catching and dying (given prevalence during the first peak). Don't know if updated for Kent Covid variant.
Indeed, you are right. In which case it's even more useful. Really brings into sharp relief just how tiny the overall risks are for healthy under-50s.
At long last we have death AND hospitalisation data that controls for UHC – that's been the critical missing factor and has led to endless arguments on here as almost all the available data stratifies for age only.
Interesting.
But you would need to know how likely they think it was for you to catch Covid during that 90-day period to get that data. So you cannot use those figures in that way.
It's better than any other data we have, given that you can put in your specific details and get a risk estimate, which is what most people want. Much of the analysis so far has been stultified by the fact that very few data sets (other than the NHS deaths update) control for UHC.
It's no good if it's about an order of magnitude out, though, possibly more due to Kent Covid and other assumptions, as it would be consistently misleading.
Is there any evidence it's an order of magnitude out?
This is why I expect the Cons to win Hartlepool. And why, if I'm wrong, it will for me be a sign that GE24 will be competitive and Labour are in with a good chance of forming the next government.
Some people thought I was spinning with that, trying to pretend a turd was chocolate, but I was perfectly serious.
This byelection up there in a few weeks is going to be such a tell either way.
Except that Lab won Hartlepool 16 months ago when such figures would have been comparable.
Other than that . . .
With a massive split in the Leave vote. I'd anticipate only a quarter to a third of the BXP vote will go back to Labour - if half goes to the Tories then its game over. Its thanks to Nigel Farage that Labour cleared the 200 seats mark...
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
I'd heard that the average age at death of people dying from covid was greater than the average age at death of the population in general. This doesn't seem to tally with an average of ten years lost?
This apparent contradiction is because at year X the average age of deaths in that year is a number, probably a bit over 80. Call it Y.
For any individual, A, who actually reaches age Y we know a vital fact about them; namely that they are not yet dead. We also know that from that point, age Y, they, on average are going to carry on living a determinable average length of time.
Covid can't kill all those very unhealthy people in the cohort that the individual A is in, because through eating drinking smoking betting and taking no exercise they have already died of something else and have never heard of Covid.
Even at age 103 (the age a friend of mine was recently), while the probability is that you are in fact already dead, if you aren't, the probability also is that you will live till the day after tomorrow.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
I'd heard that the average age at death of people dying from covid was greater than the average age at death of the population in general. This doesn't seem to tally with an average of ten years lost?
This apparent contradiction is because at year X the average age of deaths in that year is a number, probably a bit over 80. Call it Y.
For any individual, A, who actually reaches age Y we know a vital fact about them; namely that they are not yet dead. We also know that from that point, age Y, they, on average are going to carry on living a determinable average length of time.
Covid can't kill all those very unhealthy people in the cohort that the individual A is in, because through eating drinking smoking betting and taking no exercise they have already died of something else and have never heard of Covid.
Even at age 103 (the age a friend of mine was recently), while the probability is that you are in fact already dead, if you aren't, the probability also is that you will live till the day after tomorrow.
It's also why long COVID is more prevalent in younger age groups.
For those who don't know - one of the critical points in the start of WWI was the invasion of Belgium. The Germans had convinced themselves that they had to invade Belgium to invade France successfully. Because this was so vital to their plans, they had convinced themselves that the British government would ignore the treaty violation.
The British government was divided - up to an invasion of Belgium. If Belgium was not invaded, half the cabinet would not vote for war. If Belgium was invaded, then it was 100%. This was because the Belgian treaty was universally seen, in Britain, as part of the foundations of the European order.
Edward Grey, the Foreign Sec. had a meeting with the German Ambassador. If he had stated unequivocally that invading Belgium = War, then the Germans (especially the Kaiser) *might* have stopped... The problem was that Grey used too much diplomatic language.
Wasn't another part of the problem that military alliances were also secret?
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
Perhaps it's because UHC were defined so widely - e.g. high blood pressure - that most older people have at least one?
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
Perhaps it's because UHC were defined so widely - e.g. high blood pressure - that most older people have at least one?
This isn't about definitions, this is about data. The average age of death being 80 with an average life lost of around 10 years implies that the only thing that really matters is age.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
I'd heard that the average age at death of people dying from covid was greater than the average age at death of the population in general. This doesn't seem to tally with an average of ten years lost?
Think of it this way: if there was a disease that increased your chance of dying in any given year by 100-fold regardless of age, the average age of death from it would be exactly the average age of death of the population in general.
It would also cause a very significant number of years lost on average.
In this case I don't think it any worse calling it the British variant, than calling others Brazilian and SA.
imo she should call it B117 to avoid appearing anti-British but - UK variant or similar has already caught on - the letters and numbers of the different variants aren't very memorable for most people - Germans are generally pretty anglophile so I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Doubt this is right. Ministers and PHE officials will still be urging caution this time next year.
Hodges is absolutely right about this. It is getting ridiculous now. The vaccine works. Confirm the roadmap dates, lockdown borders to risky countries if you have to, but end the earnest, sanctimonious "words of caution" schtick. I offer the same advice to the PB Lockdownistas – we see it daily on here. It's depressing in the extreme.
The road map is working. However -
The opening of schools caused a massive slowdown in the decline of cases in the unvaccinated groups. No, this is not "tests" - the adults will have received PCR tests.
That opening the schools would increase R was expected and debated. What I did not expect, and am rather glad to see, is that the increase in R has not resulted in a net rise in cases.
If we open up further, cases will rise. Until we are vaccinating down to 50 (and preferably below) that means an increase in hospitalisations.
I don't deny that the roadmap is working, indeed I support the roadmap and have said so repeatedly on here. What I don't like is the endless earnest lecturing about "caution" when the vaccines clearly work.
By the way, not sure I understand your point about cases/test. The rapid rise in the young is due to their being tested. Had they not been tested, most of them would be none the wiser as they are mostly asymptomatic surely?
Look at the other groups - *all* of them "turn" at pretty much the same time.
That schools going back would increase R was taken as a given. It was debated. A number of people said it was too early. The results so far suggest it was judged correctly.
We have given a first vaccine to most of those at risk of death from COVID. However, the hospitalisation high risk cohort goes to a younger age - down to below 50. So until we have vaccinated enough people to get that cohort protected, we need to be cautious.
At the moment. we have vaccinated, at least once, something like 40% of the whole UK population*. Herd immunity starts to kick in at about double that. Israel is at 77%...
*You need too include children when talking about herd immunity.
Does it not depend partly on what we're aiming for? If we're aiming to eliminate the possibility of the NHS collapsing under pressure, then we might be there already. If it's about reducing the risk for any one individual to an acceptable level, well, we need to talk about what is an acceptable level.
Yes, I guess, this is at the heart of the matter. It's worth remembering that younger people with UHC have already been vaxxed AIUI.
I honestly don't know what the truth is, but there is a disconnect between the claim that the average amount of life lost being 10 years and underlying health issues counting for much. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think both can be true.
A large part of why the elderly are more vulnerable is that with time so many more of them have a health condition, and if you are in later retirement with a serious condition your expectancy is likely less than ten years. The fewer younger people with serious conditions likely have longer expectancy and ten years seems reasonable as an overall average, especially when you consider over half our deaths (first wave, anyhow) were in care homes where average expectancy is one or two years at most
These things can get complicated but as I understand it, roughly, the average age of deaths is 80 and the average life lost is 10 years. The ONS estimate that on average an 80 year old will live for 10 more years. This is why I struggle to see how underlying health conditions really make much difference (unless having diabetes etc. doesn't actually reduce life expectancy, which I doubt).
The problem with averages is that you average out data that is extremely relevant.
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
Well, yes, but we are talking about averages. I get that there are plenty of 88 year olds (ONS estimate average of 5 years left) dying, but the figure repeated by (I think) @Foxy is that on average, the amount of life lost to COVID is 10 years.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
I'd heard that the average age at death of people dying from covid was greater than the average age at death of the population in general. This doesn't seem to tally with an average of ten years lost?
This apparent contradiction is because at year X the average age of deaths in that year is a number, probably a bit over 80. Call it Y.
For any individual, A, who actually reaches age Y we know a vital fact about them; namely that they are not yet dead. We also know that from that point, age Y, they, on average are going to carry on living a determinable average length of time.
Covid can't kill all those very unhealthy people in the cohort that the individual A is in, because through eating drinking smoking betting and taking no exercise they have already died of something else and have never heard of Covid.
Even at age 103 (the age a friend of mine was recently), while the probability is that you are in fact already dead, if you aren't, the probability also is that you will live till the day after tomorrow.
Fun/horrifying fact. Prior to 1966, the most common age at death in the UK was....
For those who don't know - one of the critical points in the start of WWI was the invasion of Belgium. The Germans had convinced themselves that they had to invade Belgium to invade France successfully. Because this was so vital to their plans, they had convinced themselves that the British government would ignore the treaty violation.
The British government was divided - up to an invasion of Belgium. If Belgium was not invaded, half the cabinet would not vote for war. If Belgium was invaded, then it was 100%. This was because the Belgian treaty was universally seen, in Britain, as part of the foundations of the European order.
Edward Grey, the Foreign Sec. had a meeting with the German Ambassador. If he had stated unequivocally that invading Belgium = War, then the Germans (especially the Kaiser) *might* have stopped... The problem was that Grey used too much diplomatic language.
Wasn't another part of the problem that military alliances were also secret?
Maaaaybe.
But this was a definite turning point.
1) The Kaiser didn't want war if it went World War (UK getting involved, mainly) 2) So the German military (and the hawks in their Foreign Office) convinced themselves that the UK wouldn't fight 3) Anything other than a forthright declaration from the UK was taken as evidence that the UK wouldn't fight.
The depth of the UK-French alliance was supposed to be secret - but the Germans largely knew. But (2) was very strong.
Comments
Not much further to go. Stay strong!
https://twitter.com/Mij_Europe/status/1374313715097595905
Whilst it might not be a good idea for the UK government to retaliate, I think the political pressure to do so might be overwhelming, and a very convenient distraction from the Brexit trade disaster.
I think it was Leon who described it as being "forever on the horizon in the near-future". That's spot on. We have to get away from this. It's destroying people's mental health.
I've also noticed that the qcovid calculator takes into account risk of catching it (ie it assumes restrictions are in place; we want there to be no restrictions in place!)
A summary of the situation:
Most of the most vulnerable have had 1 dose of vaccine and Groups 1-4 should be around the point of having had enough time for protection. That reduces their risks considerably, but not to zero (the CFR for over 90s, as Malmesbury shows, has fallen from 40% to about 12%). So vaccination helps considerably, but it does not remove the risk. The question is whether it is at a suitable level (we've gone from 2 in 5 of over 90s who get a positive test dying to about one in eight).
A second dose looks to reduce it still further (the outcome in Israel is encouraging).
The overall reduction in mortality looks to be 85% in the eldest (including all infections rather than just declared cases).
The under-60s either haven't had vaccines yet or haven't had them long enough for protection. These account for half of ICU admissions; the number vulnerable to this is ticking down daily (well, it's not removing vulnerability; it's reducing it considerably, but close enough). Personally, the metric I pay most attention to on the covid dashboard is "number of people in mechanical ventilation beds" as that is a decent proxy for ICU admissions and is the youngest-skewed (and most significant) metric they'll be watching.
In addition, the ICNARC update every week is looking very positive.
It also looks a lot like the opening of schools merely pushed R up to about 0.9 from about 0.8. Lower than one is great. I also think that the opening up of outside won't have a bad effect on R; I'd be content for them to do that now.
There are still enough unvaccinated, otherwise healthy, 30-50 year olds to fill up the NHS if we were to remove all restrictions today.
But, not long to wait until that's no longer the case.
I would wipe out any remaining payment to the EU. Yes, permanently.
https://twitter.com/Samfr/status/1374314699060305921?s=20
Three weeks after the under 50s are done there's really no justification for indoors restrictions being greater than they were last July.
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1374312594996092934
I feel absurdly emotional seeing an actual entry in the Tripit widget on my phone.
Governments signing a new deal with one country doesn't void all its pre-existing deals. If it did countries would only have a single deal at a time, not dozens of deals.
The UK has never reneged on a debt. We should not start now.
Alternatively invoke Article 16 in retaliation and say we are not removing the invocation until a solution is arranged to prevent any Irish Sea border at all.
https://twitter.com/miriamattwood/status/1374287090125570049?s=20
There has been some time to prepare a contingency plan - if not nearly enough to create a new plant from scratch.
For the first time since September, the number of people dying of all causes in England and Wales has dropped beneath the five-year average.
According to the figures, some 10,987 people died in the week ending 12 March, which was 511 below the historical average for that week, the 10th week of the year."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-period-of-excess-death-from-second-wave-has-come-to-an-end-ons-figures-12254247
It's better than any other data we have, given that you can put in your specific details and get a risk estimate, which is what most people want. Much of the analysis so far has been stultified by the fact that very few data sets (other than the NHS deaths update) control for UHC.
@Gallowgate , not sure how glib you're being about depression and loneliness, but if the way you are feeling is anything worse than 'harumph', and you haven't already, please see a doctor. I saw a doctor for depression last October after being hectored, rightly, to do so for some time by my wife. I had been reluctant to do so because, well, the way you feel always feels rational, and the way I felt felt to me like a rational reaction to the world turning to shit, human interaction outside my house drying up completely, my children's childhoods and future being taken away from them and the country descending into a culture war on three simultaneous axes*. It felt completely rational to spend hours of each day wishing I was dead. Working out how I could kill myself in the way which would least incovenience my family and anyone who had to discover my body felt like an important problem to be working on. Hanging around on motorway bridges trying to work out whether the drop would kill me cleanly and whether I could identify a spot on the hard shoulder which wouldn't disrupt traffic seemed like a sensible response to life as it was panning out.
It's really, really hard to talk about this stuff with a doctor (or indeed anyone).
I'm so glad a did.
He prescribed me some anti-depressants (Sertraline) - they're meant to take a few weeks to work, but in my case I actually felt better within a few hours. Not happy. But not suicidal. Not a visceral feeling of dread in my gut. And not feeling like this after I had been feeling like this for, what, months, so contiunously that I had forgotten what it felt like NOT to wake up and feel the dread in my stomach felt, by comparison, like the biggest high I had ever experienced. It wasn't, really - it was just feeling OK. But feeling OK is how you should be feeling.
I'm not saying I'm feeling great about the world now. I'm still - intellectually - cross about my children not being able to see their grandparents and about all the other what I consider needless restrictions we are living under; I'm in believe-it-when-I-see-it mode about the country opening up again, and I am, of course, furious that the EU appears to be trying to kill and impoverish the British. But I feel these things intellectually, rather than viscerally; and I can hold those thoughts in my head at the same time as taking pleasure in the emerging spring, in a good meal, in the smiles of my children (which, last October, would just break my heart for reminding me of all they were missing out on). Life is not, yet, great. But I am not suffering.
TLDR - your opinions of the world aren't wrong. But that doesn't mean you need to suffer. Please consider, if you even suspect you might need to, seeing a doctor.
*pro-lockdown vs anti-lockdown, woke v no-woke, Brexit v Remain
The average 80 year old may have 10 years of life on average, but that's an average. A specific 80 year old won't be the average.
A healthy and active 80 year old non-smoker, living in their own home, with no major conditions besides those you'd expect in an 80 year old will not have the same life expectancy as an 80 year old living in a care home with dementia and Stage 4 cancer.
Conditions for the individual matter.
https://twitter.com/JamesKanag/status/1374314357606260743?s=20
I'm fairly confident that the Union Unit goon squad will not pay the slightest attention to this.
More of a problem is our own supply chain. We fish a load of species that we don't eat but Europeans don't. Fishing doesn't pay the bills unless we can export. Same with farming where we export both older animals and carcasses. Or we used to. Won't take very long before farming either needs huge subsidies or starts to go to the wall.
"Just buy / sell from somewhere else" is a great slogan but of no use in reality.
Accordingly, multiply the numbers by about 50 to get your risk-of-infected.
(The difference between the hospitalisation and death risk can also be used - so while someone of age 48 has about a 0.18% chance of death, they have about 12 times that chance of being hospitalised - around 2.16%.
Some people thought I was spinning with that, trying to pretend a turd was chocolate, but I was perfectly serious.
This byelection up there in a few weeks is going to be such a tell either way.
It is unthinkable that les Anglais win the war of the vaccine
BY ANNE-ELISABETH MOUTET"
https://unherd.com/2021/03/why-we-love-to-hate-the-english/
Those claims of '100% effective' should be treated with some caution; they are generally based on 0 deaths (or hospitalisations) showing up in the vaccination group of the trial, but if the number of deaths in the placebo groups is small, the error bars on the downside will be quite big. In the Israeli, English and Scottish real-world data, the vaccines haven't been 100% effective on deaths/hospitalisations, but they have been very good - at least 90% seems a reasonable cautious estimate once fully vaccinated. It may well be even better.
I don't see how underlying health conditions can matter all that much if the average life lost broadly matches the average life left of those dying.
Its only a small portion of GDP. Isn't that the line?
I expect that once Easter is done, there will be voices loudly pointing to the very low death rates, the tumbling hospital admissions and saying "speed it up...." Politicians v scientists will be quite the battle.
Unlike them our leaders have to answer to voters
For those who don't know - one of the critical points in the start of WWI was the invasion of Belgium. The Germans had convinced themselves that they had to invade Belgium to invade France successfully. Because this was so vital to their plans, they had convinced themselves that the British government would ignore the treaty violation.
The British government was divided - up to an invasion of Belgium. If Belgium was not invaded, half the cabinet would not vote for war. If Belgium was invaded, then it was 100%. This was because the Belgian treaty was universally seen, in Britain, as part of the foundations of the European order.
Edward Grey, the Foreign Sec. had a meeting with the German Ambassador. If he had stated unequivocally that invading Belgium = War, then the Germans (especially the Kaiser) *might* have stopped... The problem was that Grey used too much diplomatic language.
He's calculated that not by doing any form of serious analysis of the individuals who have died matching their personal life expectancy with their death, but instead by averaging averages and matching one average with another. Life doesn't work that way.
The average life lost only matches the average life left, because that is how it was calculated by definition.
Put in this way, a fifth of all deaths have been from Care Homes. The median life expectancy of someone going into a Care Home is less than 12 months, not a decade. But if you just look at their age and use an average you'll say ten years not less than 12 months.
You are an example - it is not weakness, it is strength to seek medical help when it is required.
And the Leaver seats in NE Wales in the Senedd (Wrexham, Clwyd South, Alyn & Deeside, Delyn, Vale of Clwyd) -- all currently held by Labour, but all vulnerable and mainly Tory-held at Westminster -- are another good test.
As I am now expecting the Vaccine War to be fully raging by May, I think Labour will find it heavy going.
Other than that . . .
I'll be honest, I'm sceptical of the 10 years figure, but there are some on here who were insistent that that's what the data show.
It is astonishing that this even needs to be said.
Not likely to receive my first dose until May (I'm 40).
For any individual, A, who actually reaches age Y we know a vital fact about them; namely that they are not yet dead. We also know that from that point, age Y, they, on average are going to carry on living a determinable average length of time.
Covid can't kill all those very unhealthy people in the cohort that the individual A is in, because through eating drinking smoking betting and taking no exercise they have already died of something else and have never heard of Covid.
Even at age 103 (the age a friend of mine was recently), while the probability is that you are in fact already dead, if you aren't, the probability also is that you will live till the day after tomorrow.
Everything we know about Boris suggests popularity & expediency are top trumps.
So, Boris will respond ... and Labour will be on the back foot, with SKS & his Merry Hartlepool Remainer left wibbling.
After Red Ken, Corbyn, May and Starmer, Boris really should have lucked out in terms of dumb-fuck opponents.
But, no.
Now he gets Ursula, Emmanuel and Angela (sadly ageing & out of touch) to fight.
She is also wrong to separate out more contagious and contagious for longer: it is more contagious because it is contagious for longer.
https://twitter.com/DavidHenigUK/status/1374330430837682177?s=20
https://twitter.com/DavidHenigUK/status/1374330987426021382?s=20
If they have "the upper hand" why haven't they already got the vaccines?
https://twitter.com/bradloncar/status/1374327294903324679
Wow.
But hey. You have a vaccine that protects you from a disease you almost certainly wouldn't die from.
So that's alright then.
It would also cause a very significant number of years lost on average.
Averages are funky business.
- UK variant or similar has already caught on
- the letters and numbers of the different variants aren't very memorable for most people
- Germans are generally pretty anglophile
so I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt on this one.
It's a skydive you almost certainly won't die from.
0 years
(source)
But this was a definite turning point.
1) The Kaiser didn't want war if it went World War (UK getting involved, mainly)
2) So the German military (and the hawks in their Foreign Office) convinced themselves that the UK wouldn't fight
3) Anything other than a forthright declaration from the UK was taken as evidence that the UK wouldn't fight.
The depth of the UK-French alliance was supposed to be secret - but the Germans largely knew. But (2) was very strong.