"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
The way it needs to be done is for a physical certificate of vaccination in your passport, as has always been the case until now.
As with contact tracing, anything based on mobile phone apps has a million potential problems, including older and poorer people with the wrong phones, and the potential for bars and other businesses to start using it.
Hmm. Australia has an excellent efficient e-visa system which generally relies on smartphones. I presume there is a workaround for non-smartphone-owners, I don’t know what it is
South Korea’s excellent covid control system relies on smartphones
Frankly, if you are too old, poor or stupid to own a smartphone, you’re going to die soon anyway, so you might as well get the bug and croak now; this is just the bug speeding up natural selection.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Wasn't it the case that almost 100% of the old £50 notes had traces of cocaine in, when tested?
I wonder whether the new plastic notes behave in similar ways. And whether anyone thought of that during the preparation for rollout.
I recall a study saying that almost 100% of all types of old notes had traces of cocaine and fecal matter in, when tested.
What they don't understand is that of the EU has insisted on the same kind of contract that we have with AZ for their Pfizer one, it would have resulted in Pfizer building new capacity outside of of the EU, either here or in Switzerland, to service non-EU markets just as AZ have done because they need to be able to service non US/UK/IN clients, all of which have supply reservations for domestically manufactured doses.
Their approach has led to fewer vaccine doses being supplied globally because they chose to underinvest. The only way to get the kinds of contracts we have with AZ is to pay way over the odds and help them invest in manufacturing. Buying up 100% of Pfizer's supply would have been extremely costly and the EU was never ready to pay that cost.
They really did think they were simply buying widgets, and that being the EU - the single largest Western purchasing group - the manufacturers of said widgets would be bending over backwards to give them the best price.
After the pandemic it will be interesting to see if all this has a knock on effect with companies diversifying where they manufacture
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
Tyne & Wear used to have an integrated transport system which used buses on the periphery and interchange to the metro to get to the centre. Foolishly Thatcher ended that and interchange fares went so private operators clogged the city centre with buses.
Frankly, if you are too old, poor or stupid to own a smartphone, you’re going to die soon anyway, so you might as well get the bug and croak now; this is just the bug speeding up natural selection.
Question on Israeli 'R'. That doesn't really tell us if vaccines prevent transmission in itself, surely?
Example:
You've been vaccinated and you're out on the lash in Tel Aviv. You catch COVID. You experience no symptoms because you've been vaccinated so you don't take a test.
The question is, are you able to transmit COVID to other people despite experiencing no symptoms?
The answer to this question isn't mega important in the grand scheme of things because if everyone is vaccinated, it doesn't matter if they 'catch' COVID.
This is the question that has been asked for the past six months. I think some studies ( @MaxPB?) have shown that it does decrease transmission not just reduced coughing and sneezing given asymptomatic presence.
Because you are right - if it doesn't then it doesn't matter if people have or have not been vaccinated in terms of the danger they would pose to others.
Someone asymptomatic who has been vaccinated would as likely as not spread or not spread the virus in exactly the same way as someone asymptomatic who hasn't been vaccinated.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Inflation-wise a £50 today is the same as a £20 in 1989. On that bases, a new £100 note doesn't seem that nuts.
I read somewhere that there is a statistical problem with care home staff. Many have two jobs and the ONS doesn't keep records of them in the same way as the other categories.
Some are also self-employed, and they are disproportionately from ethnic minorities who are more likely to be resistant to being vaccinated
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
When I went into Vietnam in about 1992-3, there was a bank note that was so worthless even beggars wouldn't take them!
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
I think either of you could well end up being correct. I merely add the observation that the Spanish Flu, immeasurably worse in both proportionate and actual deaths (fingers crossed) worldwide, was almost completely obliterated from popular imagination. How much literature is there on the (immediately preceding) First World War and then the (immediately following) "roaring" Twenties compared to the misery of an influenza pandemic that wiped out whole families in day?
On that note, comparisons with the flu for this virus are not appropriate in either direction. Most common influenzas today are less lethal than Covid, that which sprang out of a pig into the human population in 1918 was most certainly far more lethal than our current adversary. If Covid-19 had emerged in a decade not too long ago when viral sequencing was not available, it is absolutely certain it would been identified as an influenza.
Yes I was pondering that the other day - the Roaring Twenties.
Sorry, but Class 20s are Choppers or Bombs. Classes 81 to 85 are Roarers.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Whatever do you use it for? I have £12 in my wallet and last spent cash a couple of months ago. Which was the first time for some time.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
A big mistake by the EU in 1999 was to mint a 500 Euro note. Very popular with criminals apparently.
"The Life and Death of the Bin Laden The short-lived 500 euro bill became the currency of choice for international criminals. But eliminating it may not solve the problem."
The €500 was the largest bill in the world for years, and indeed was the banknote of choice for the worlds criminals. Didn’t know they were called Bin Ladens - but was familiar with the much more common Benjamins, themselves a relatively small value for the largest banknote issued by a country.
Seems to be, at least locally, a shortage of Pfizer vaccine. Wife's had an appointment for her second AZN; no date for my second Pfizer. Now 10 weeks since my first.
There have been some mentions of the idea of herd immunity.
So, if we assume that the vaccine is 75% effective at preventing infection and assume that the effect of the vaccine is simple* we can construct the following table
*the vaccine effect is simply a multiple on the original R number.
It's temptingly straightforward, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the dispersion number, k, makes it more complicated - but also very possibly better for us.
R being 3 or 4 is simply the mean of a heck of a spread with almost everyone below the R value (and usually significantly below) and a sparse handful way above it, bringing the average up.
So reducing the infectivity means that everything shifts left on that graph (simplistically). More and more people fall in the 0 column, and the 10+ bunch come down - and if the infectivity isn't linear, possibly a long way down.
Add to that the fact that for it to spread, superspreaders must "link up" with superspreaders in a sort of series of nodes of infection. The more that infectivity is reduced, the harder it is to "find" another superspreader. It peters out a lot quicker a lot more often, and when it does reach another superspreader, they, too, are inhibited with the number they'll reach.
It's sort of like giving us at least a double hit against the virus. It may be bollocks, but I do suspect that we'll find that R drops considerably faster than the simple calculation of transmission reduction.
(Everyone's free to quote this at me a couple of months down the line if it does, indeed, turn out to be a load of old twaddle)
Yes, I agree with this. Most SEIR models are differential equations, which treat populations as infinitely divisible. In such a model the superspreaders are always connected, albeit lightly. Better, but more computationally expensive, are stochastic models that can truly capture the probability of extinction of the virus within various groups. I know that the much-mentioned Imperial model used a deterministic model, and do recall seeing at least one UK model that was stochastic, but I don't recall who else was using what.
It's been clear to me for a long time that overdispersion is a significant factor in COVID, well before people were talking about it: this disease needed a "critical mass" to take off, a classic sign of overdispersion. By the way, dispersion is not entirely captured by the "k" parameter, and very different epidemics can result from the same value of "k".
What we don't know is how vaccination affects dispersion. I think it's biologically plausible that vaccinated superspreaders remain superspreaders (but vaccinated others are resistant to catching it from them), but equally plausible that vaccination turns superspreaders into mediocrespreaders. We also don't know whether superspreaders are also supercatchers, and whether vaccination affects this. (And we don't know whether different vaccines are different in these respects.) It will be extremely difficult ever to determine these, other than very indirectly, and we may never know.
For what it's worth, I tentatively share your prediction that, at a certain point, we'll see R drop rather suddenly. The flip side is that we may see bad outbreaks amongst under-vaccinated groups.
I'm expecting the Cons to do well in the locals and to win Hartlepool. But I'm feeling more chipper about GE24 (for Labour) than I have for a while. I think when the wheels come off this government it will be all four of them.
Maybe. For most normal politicians all four wheels would have come off following prorogation and the failure to die in a ditch. To torture the metaphor, Johnson has proved capable of convincing enough of the voters that he drives the Emperor's New Car, which is happily whizzing around, floating in mid-air with no need of wheels.
You'd think that the reality distortion would have to be punctured eventually, but clearly he has a relationship with his supporters that is beyond my ken. So how to judge when and why this might happen?
To quote a shouted conversation between two middle aged men outside my house at 11.30 last night: "I hate Boris. Absolutely hate him. But as long as Labour keep behaving like spoiled kids I'm going to keep voting for him. He's not a racist. He's not a fascist, and when they say he is they look ridiculous." From what I could glean, his particular beef was the Bristol protestors, but I inferred that it extended to all shrill left wing voices. Now, you might reasonably say this seems a tad unfair on SKS etc. But in the mind if this fella at least a vote for Labour is a vote endorsing students attacking police stations, tearing down of statues, white guilt, EU vaccine madness and all the other fringe views which travel alongside Labour.
A tad unfair perhaps. SKS has tried to rid the Labour Party of some if its more Corbyny elements. But many people don't pay that much attention and easily conflate the two. My thesis is that the Tories do best when the left is at its maddest.
Maybe there are enough votes to be won without worrying about two Daily Mail readers gobbing outside your house? There are others who will be overheard saying 'Say what you like about Priti Patel but why should we pay money to keep these people in prison......'.
One of the things I liked about Corbyn was he did what HE believed to be right not what Paul Dacre did. His only problem was that he wasn't competent.
You misunderstand me Roger. My point, illustrated by an anecdote only for a little colour, was in response to LostPassword and kinbalu speculating on the support Boris has. My suggestion is that his buoyancy in the polls is not driven by wild levels of enthusiasm for Boris, but by opposition to 'the left' as a whole - which is rather unfair on SKS, who knows the toxicity of the wilder elements of the left and has striven to distance himself and his party from them; but, you know, people don't pay that much attention between elections to who exactly supports what.
All the Tories really have to do at the next GE campaign is point at who and what Sir Keir was campaigning for at the last one - Jeremy Corbyn PM & a “People’s vote”
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Inflation-wise a £50 today is the same as a £20 in 1989. On that bases, a new £100 note doesn't seem that nuts.
I think we should rebase the currency every time we have a new Monarch. Make KCIII £1 = £10 QEII and then KWV £1 = £10 KCIII, etc, and we'll stop inflation from driving us inevitably to having to use daftly large numbers for everyday transactions.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
Also speeds up the money laundering and requires smaller suitcases
Seems to be, at least locally, a shortage of Pfizer vaccine. Wife's had an appointment for her second AZN; no date for my second Pfizer. Now 10 weeks since my first.
I should get on to the NHS website and try to book it yourself, King.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
The way it needs to be done is for a physical certificate of vaccination in your passport, as has always been the case until now.
As with contact tracing, anything based on mobile phone apps has a million potential problems, including older and poorer people with the wrong phones, and the potential for bars and other businesses to start using it.
Around 25% don't have smartphones. That's a lot of people to discriminate against. Unless you want to make smartphones compulsory.
Realistically the issue is not discrimination, it is that they all have a vote, and quite a lot of them exercise it.
Question on Israeli 'R'. That doesn't really tell us if vaccines prevent transmission in itself, surely?
Example:
You've been vaccinated and you're out on the lash in Tel Aviv. You catch COVID. You experience no symptoms because you've been vaccinated so you don't take a test.
The question is, are you able to transmit COVID to other people despite experiencing no symptoms?
The answer to this question isn't mega important in the grand scheme of things because if everyone is vaccinated, it doesn't matter if they 'catch' COVID.
The answer seems to be you still may be able to transmit, but you are less likely to because your overall viral load is lower and you are shedding less virus. But not everyone who is vaccinated and then catches COVID does transmit.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
The way it needs to be done is for a physical certificate of vaccination in your passport, as has always been the case until now.
As with contact tracing, anything based on mobile phone apps has a million potential problems, including older and poorer people with the wrong phones, and the potential for bars and other businesses to start using it.
Hmm. Australia has an excellent efficient e-visa system which generally relies on smartphones. I presume there is a workaround for non-smartphone-owners, I don’t know what it is
South Korea’s excellent covid control system relies on smartphones
Frankly, if you are too old, poor or stupid to own a smartphone, you’re going to die soon anyway, so you might as well get the bug and croak now; this is just the bug speeding up natural selection.
Why are those who use smartphones so intolerant towards those who don't? It's almost as if it annoys them that some people have managed to avoid getting addicted to them. If 100% are addicted, it wouldn't count as an addiction anymore, because it would be like eating, drinking, sleeping, etc. But as long as a significant number of people don't use them it proves that it is an addiction just like gambling, smoking, and so on.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Is it the UK that's the exception or the UAE?
Still amuses me that the USA has a $1 note.
I remember going to Uzbekistan and having to had over an inch thick wad of notes just to pay a £40 hotel bill.
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
The European Commission and the UK government should not be discussing the distribution of coronavirus vaccines in an atmosphere of war, former president of the European Commission Jean Claude Juncker says.
While he understands the recent move of the president of the Commission to threaten export bans, it could create a major reputational damage to the European Union - which used to be the world free-trade champion - and is not the right way to act, he tells BBC Hardtalk.
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
How much do you think this will have an impact on petrol prices?
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
The way it needs to be done is for a physical certificate of vaccination in your passport, as has always been the case until now.
As with contact tracing, anything based on mobile phone apps has a million potential problems, including older and poorer people with the wrong phones, and the potential for bars and other businesses to start using it.
Around 25% don't have smartphones. That's a lot of people to discriminate against. Unless you want to make smartphones compulsory.
Realistically the issue is not discrimination, it is that they all have a vote, and quite a lot of them exercise it.
Just introduce voter ID and make it so the ID is digital and available via smartphone only. Problem solved*
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
They should dig a second full canal, like the Channel Tunnel.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
I've always said all along that lockdown was a sign of failure. It clearly shouldn't be our first option.
But the failure was not to find some other way to control the spread of the virus. That is what we need to prepare for in the future.
Trying to tough it out without a lockdown, after other attempts to control the virus has failed, would have been worse.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
By that logic, the colossal costs and debt burden of WW2 were an error, as it was quite possible that new threats would emerge with similar costs in the following 10-20 years (indeed, the cold war, without nuclear weapons, would perhaps have got hot). The Berlin airlift was an error, because it wouldn't have been sustainable had the blockade been repeated year after year. Or we shouldn't close airports when the runways are frozen because if we get more severe weather it won't be possible to run airports at all.
If pandemics of a similar severity pop up every few years then we won't be able to do this every time. We'll have to adapt and do it differently - get damn good at tracking and isolating, for example, build up mass test capacity. If we get more of these, we'll all have to take the South Korea route if we want to have any kind of life. If it's another hundred years to the next big pandemic (as it was since the last) then we can absolutely have the same response again. Why not?
Question on Israeli 'R'. That doesn't really tell us if vaccines prevent transmission in itself, surely?
Example:
You've been vaccinated and you're out on the lash in Tel Aviv. You catch COVID. You experience no symptoms because you've been vaccinated so you don't take a test.
The question is, are you able to transmit COVID to other people despite experiencing no symptoms?
The answer to this question isn't mega important in the grand scheme of things because if everyone is vaccinated, it doesn't matter if they 'catch' COVID.
The big question is, do you test positive with the PCR test that the airline or destination country insist on you taking 48 hours before your return flight?
Even if you’re vaccinated, the airline, your country of origin, and your destination may still refuse you travel if you test positive.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
I think either of you could well end up being correct. I merely add the observation that the Spanish Flu, immeasurably worse in both proportionate and actual deaths (fingers crossed) worldwide, was almost completely obliterated from popular imagination. How much literature is there on the (immediately preceding) First World War and then the (immediately following) "roaring" Twenties compared to the misery of an influenza pandemic that wiped out whole families in day?
On that note, comparisons with the flu for this virus are not appropriate in either direction. Most common influenzas today are less lethal than Covid, that which sprang out of a pig into the human population in 1918 was most certainly far more lethal than our current adversary. If Covid-19 had emerged in a decade not too long ago when viral sequencing was not available, it is absolutely certain it would been identified as an influenza.
Yes I was pondering that the other day - the Roaring Twenties.
Sorry, but Class 20s are Choppers or Bombs. Classes 81 to 85 are Roarers.
Seems to be, at least locally, a shortage of Pfizer vaccine. Wife's had an appointment for her second AZN; no date for my second Pfizer. Now 10 weeks since my first.
I should get on to the NHS website and try to book it yourself, King.
Colleague in Southend just contacted me - they told him to get in tomorrow as big shortages incoming
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Is it the UK that's the exception or the UAE?
Still amuses me that the USA has a $1 note.
UK and UAE are both exceptions, at opposite ends of the scale.
Try using your 1,000dhm note in a taxi, as I did the very first time I arrived here.
Question on Israeli 'R'. That doesn't really tell us if vaccines prevent transmission in itself, surely?
Example:
You've been vaccinated and you're out on the lash in Tel Aviv. You catch COVID. You experience no symptoms because you've been vaccinated so you don't take a test.
The question is, are you able to transmit COVID to other people despite experiencing no symptoms?
The answer to this question isn't mega important in the grand scheme of things because if everyone is vaccinated, it doesn't matter if they 'catch' COVID.
The big question is, do you test positive with the PCR test that the airline or destination country insist on you taking 48 hours before your return flight?
Even if you’re vaccinated, the airline, your country of origin, and your destination may still refuse you travel if you test positive.
And with good reason if you can infect others, surely?
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
Just before covid a friend of mine spent $57 million on a private jet
FIFTY SEVEN MILLION
It is, by a vast distance, the biggest single purchase I’ve ever personally encountered. I know a fair few rich people, but none of them have spent anything near that on a single item, not even a house
I asked him what it was like writing the cheque (no idea why he cut a cheque). He said it was ‘weird’
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
They should dig a second full canal, like the Channel Tunnel.
Dare I suggest that a second canal might be on the agenda, as of about yesterday!
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
I seem to recall being told in Dubai that they could be the top prize for forecasting at the race-track...... some Moslem issue with gambling ..... and were often just abandoned at the airport.
Seems to be, at least locally, a shortage of Pfizer vaccine. Wife's had an appointment for her second AZN; no date for my second Pfizer. Now 10 weeks since my first.
I should get on to the NHS website and try to book it yourself, King.
Can't; says I've had one from GP, so can't book elsewhere. Another couple of weeks before the twelve week deadline, though.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
How much do you think this will have an impact on petrol prices?
Petrol prices in Europe could well start rising quickly, if this ship doesn’t move over the weekend. 10% of the world’s GDP travels through the Suez Canal, including almost all the oil and gas from the Middle East. Fill your car up!
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
Just before covid a friend of mine spent $57 million on a private jet
FIFTY SEVEN MILLION
It is, by a vast distance, the biggest single purchase I’ve ever personally encountered. I know a fair few rich people, but none of them have spent anything near that on a single item, not even a house
I asked him what it was like writing the cheque (no idea why he cut a cheque). He said it was ‘weird’
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
They should dig a second full canal, like the Channel Tunnel.
Talking of major transport infrastructure - I just drove around the back of Euston Station for the first time in ages.
HS2 is now visibly smashing its way north. Epic scenes of heavy engineering, like the first big Victorian railways. Quite unsettling in a mixed way to see something talked of, for so long, actually happening. I suppose in the rear of my mind I still had the vague notion it might be cancelled. Clearly not.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
Just before covid a friend of mine spent $57 million on a private jet
FIFTY SEVEN MILLION
It is, by a vast distance, the biggest single purchase I’ve ever personally encountered. I know a fair few rich people, but none of them have spent anything near that on a single item, not even a house
I asked him what it was like writing the cheque (no idea why he cut a cheque). He said it was ‘weird’
"Not even a house".
LOL
That was, of course, the joke. I’m glad it was noticed
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Is it the UK that's the exception or the UAE?
Still amuses me that the USA has a $1 note.
UK and UAE are both exceptions, at opposite ends of the scale.
Try using your 1,000dhm note in a taxi, as I did the very first time I arrived here.
I once watched an American get himself in all sorts of trouble in a small Thai shop with a 1000Baht note. IIRC he wanted a bottle of water, ca 4 Baht.
I'm expecting the Cons to do well in the locals and to win Hartlepool. But I'm feeling more chipper about GE24 (for Labour) than I have for a while. I think when the wheels come off this government it will be all four of them.
Maybe. For most normal politicians all four wheels would have come off following prorogation and the failure to die in a ditch. To torture the metaphor, Johnson has proved capable of convincing enough of the voters that he drives the Emperor's New Car, which is happily whizzing around, floating in mid-air with no need of wheels.
You'd think that the reality distortion would have to be punctured eventually, but clearly he has a relationship with his supporters that is beyond my ken. So how to judge when and why this might happen?
To quote a shouted conversation between two middle aged men outside my house at 11.30 last night: "I hate Boris. Absolutely hate him. But as long as Labour keep behaving like spoiled kids I'm going to keep voting for him. He's not a racist. He's not a fascist, and when they say he is they look ridiculous." From what I could glean, his particular beef was the Bristol protestors, but I inferred that it extended to all shrill left wing voices. Now, you might reasonably say this seems a tad unfair on SKS etc. But in the mind if this fella at least a vote for Labour is a vote endorsing students attacking police stations, tearing down of statues, white guilt, EU vaccine madness and all the other fringe views which travel alongside Labour.
A tad unfair perhaps. SKS has tried to rid the Labour Party of some if its more Corbyny elements. But many people don't pay that much attention and easily conflate the two. My thesis is that the Tories do best when the left is at its maddest.
Maybe there are enough votes to be won without worrying about two Daily Mail readers gobbing outside your house? There are others who will be overheard saying 'Say what you like about Priti Patel but why should we pay money to keep these people in prison......'.
One of the things I liked about Corbyn was he did what HE believed to be right not what Paul Dacre did. His only problem was that he wasn't competent.
You misunderstand me Roger. My point, illustrated by an anecdote only for a little colour, was in response to LostPassword and kinbalu speculating on the support Boris has. My suggestion is that his buoyancy in the polls is not driven by wild levels of enthusiasm for Boris, but by opposition to 'the left' as a whole - which is rather unfair on SKS, who knows the toxicity of the wilder elements of the left and has striven to distance himself and his party from them; but, you know, people don't pay that much attention between elections to who exactly supports what.
All the Tories really have to do at the next GE campaign is point at who and what Sir Keir was campaigning for at the last one - Jeremy Corbyn PM & a “People’s vote”
“People’s vote”, what a bunch of wallies
"Fighting the last war" is not usually a winning strategy.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
Over the last half century the rate of emergence of new zoonotic viruses has been increasing. Ebola in 1976, SARS in 2003, MERS in 2012. HIV probably jumped the species barrier in the 1920s but became a global pandemic (still ongoing, with a death toll far worse than COVID-19 lest we forget) only in the 1980s. So it has, to a lesser extent perhaps, already been happening "again and again". We just got lucky as to transmissability and extent before now.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
Globalisation increases the risk of pandemics, as does mass travel. Unless you think these will be thrown into vigorous reverse, then it is likely we will see another Covid long before another century has passed.
A lot of epidemiologists believe we were intensely lucky in avoiding one since 1918. We dodged a number of bullets. SARS, MERS, etc
Of course the next Covid doesn’t have to be nearly as bad, if we all learn from East Asia
I'm expecting the Cons to do well in the locals and to win Hartlepool. But I'm feeling more chipper about GE24 (for Labour) than I have for a while. I think when the wheels come off this government it will be all four of them.
Maybe. For most normal politicians all four wheels would have come off following prorogation and the failure to die in a ditch. To torture the metaphor, Johnson has proved capable of convincing enough of the voters that he drives the Emperor's New Car, which is happily whizzing around, floating in mid-air with no need of wheels.
You'd think that the reality distortion would have to be punctured eventually, but clearly he has a relationship with his supporters that is beyond my ken. So how to judge when and why this might happen?
To quote a shouted conversation between two middle aged men outside my house at 11.30 last night: "I hate Boris. Absolutely hate him. But as long as Labour keep behaving like spoiled kids I'm going to keep voting for him. He's not a racist. He's not a fascist, and when they say he is they look ridiculous." From what I could glean, his particular beef was the Bristol protestors, but I inferred that it extended to all shrill left wing voices. Now, you might reasonably say this seems a tad unfair on SKS etc. But in the mind if this fella at least a vote for Labour is a vote endorsing students attacking police stations, tearing down of statues, white guilt, EU vaccine madness and all the other fringe views which travel alongside Labour.
A tad unfair perhaps. SKS has tried to rid the Labour Party of some if its more Corbyny elements. But many people don't pay that much attention and easily conflate the two. My thesis is that the Tories do best when the left is at its maddest.
Maybe there are enough votes to be won without worrying about two Daily Mail readers gobbing outside your house? There are others who will be overheard saying 'Say what you like about Priti Patel but why should we pay money to keep these people in prison......'.
One of the things I liked about Corbyn was he did what HE believed to be right not what Paul Dacre did. His only problem was that he wasn't competent.
You misunderstand me Roger. My point, illustrated by an anecdote only for a little colour, was in response to LostPassword and kinbalu speculating on the support Boris has. My suggestion is that his buoyancy in the polls is not driven by wild levels of enthusiasm for Boris, but by opposition to 'the left' as a whole - which is rather unfair on SKS, who knows the toxicity of the wilder elements of the left and has striven to distance himself and his party from them; but, you know, people don't pay that much attention between elections to who exactly supports what.
All the Tories really have to do at the next GE campaign is point at who and what Sir Keir was campaigning for at the last one - Jeremy Corbyn PM & a “People’s vote”
“People’s vote”, what a bunch of wallies
"Fighting the last war" is not usually a winning strategy.
Question on Israeli 'R'. That doesn't really tell us if vaccines prevent transmission in itself, surely?
Example:
You've been vaccinated and you're out on the lash in Tel Aviv. You catch COVID. You experience no symptoms because you've been vaccinated so you don't take a test.
The question is, are you able to transmit COVID to other people despite experiencing no symptoms?
The answer to this question isn't mega important in the grand scheme of things because if everyone is vaccinated, it doesn't matter if they 'catch' COVID.
The big question is, do you test positive with the PCR test that the airline or destination country insist on you taking 48 hours before your return flight?
Even if you’re vaccinated, the airline, your country of origin, and your destination may still refuse you travel if you test positive.
And with good reason if you can infect others, surely?
Very much so. But tell that to the hoards of people who think they can go on holiday to places full of virus, because they’ve been vaccinated.
Anyone testing positive before their return flight will get to spend two weeks more on ‘holiday’, maybe in a public facility or confined to their hotel room at their own expense.
This is what everyone is missing when it comes to holidays. In my part of the world it’s been an ongoing story for the past year.
Looks like the Tories have an outside chance of getting the most votes. It may depend on relative turnout.
And of course postal votes may play a part this time
Will the Tories and Plaid be able to organise some sort of coalition to keep Labour out? Difficult to imagine it because their policies are so different.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
I'm not saying I think it will. Only that it might. There are reasons to think that these will be more regular occurrences due to our unabated encroachment into rainforests. But, in any case, I only need to posit it as a hypothetical in support of the reductio ad absurdum argument.
I don't accept Selebian's WW2 analogy below, by the way. This is not even close.
I'm expecting the Cons to do well in the locals and to win Hartlepool. But I'm feeling more chipper about GE24 (for Labour) than I have for a while. I think when the wheels come off this government it will be all four of them.
Maybe. For most normal politicians all four wheels would have come off following prorogation and the failure to die in a ditch. To torture the metaphor, Johnson has proved capable of convincing enough of the voters that he drives the Emperor's New Car, which is happily whizzing around, floating in mid-air with no need of wheels.
You'd think that the reality distortion would have to be punctured eventually, but clearly he has a relationship with his supporters that is beyond my ken. So how to judge when and why this might happen?
To quote a shouted conversation between two middle aged men outside my house at 11.30 last night: "I hate Boris. Absolutely hate him. But as long as Labour keep behaving like spoiled kids I'm going to keep voting for him. He's not a racist. He's not a fascist, and when they say he is they look ridiculous." From what I could glean, his particular beef was the Bristol protestors, but I inferred that it extended to all shrill left wing voices. Now, you might reasonably say this seems a tad unfair on SKS etc. But in the mind if this fella at least a vote for Labour is a vote endorsing students attacking police stations, tearing down of statues, white guilt, EU vaccine madness and all the other fringe views which travel alongside Labour.
A tad unfair perhaps. SKS has tried to rid the Labour Party of some if its more Corbyny elements. But many people don't pay that much attention and easily conflate the two. My thesis is that the Tories do best when the left is at its maddest.
Maybe there are enough votes to be won without worrying about two Daily Mail readers gobbing outside your house? There are others who will be overheard saying 'Say what you like about Priti Patel but why should we pay money to keep these people in prison......'.
One of the things I liked about Corbyn was he did what HE believed to be right not what Paul Dacre did. His only problem was that he wasn't competent.
You misunderstand me Roger. My point, illustrated by an anecdote only for a little colour, was in response to LostPassword and kinbalu speculating on the support Boris has. My suggestion is that his buoyancy in the polls is not driven by wild levels of enthusiasm for Boris, but by opposition to 'the left' as a whole - which is rather unfair on SKS, who knows the toxicity of the wilder elements of the left and has striven to distance himself and his party from them; but, you know, people don't pay that much attention between elections to who exactly supports what.
All the Tories really have to do at the next GE campaign is point at who and what Sir Keir was campaigning for at the last one - Jeremy Corbyn PM & a “People’s vote”
“People’s vote”, what a bunch of wallies
"Fighting the last war" is not usually a winning strategy.
Wouldn’t know, but when Sir Keir is earnestly parroting rehearsed lines in the debate monologue about accepting Brexit and not being like Corbyn, the Tories just have to remind people that he doesn’t really mean it - he campaigned to overturn the Leave vote and make Jezza PM
Ed Balls/David Miliband/Andy Burnham could be the ones who are untarnished by “the Peoples Vote” and Corbyn - maybe Labour should try and tempt them back into the Commons
The more I think about it the more Sanofi is to blame for the EU's current situation wrt vaccines. They clearly bet the farm on BioNTech and Sanofi both becoming available in Q1 with at least 50m doses of each one plus 80m of AZ. If AZ had reduced their deliveries to the same 30m but the EU had 50m Sanofi doses in addition to those 30m and 50m from Pfizer I really believe that they would have just shut up and got on with it. No idiotic accusations or threats of export bans. It would have put the EU on the same path as the US in Q1, just behind us and I'm sure that would have been good enough.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
I'm not saying I think it will. Only that it might. There are reasons to think that these will be more regular occurrences due to our unabated encroachment into rainforests. But, in any case, I only need to posit it as a hypothetical in support of the reductio ad absurdum argument.
I don't accept Selebian's WW2 analogy below, by the way. This is not even close.
Why 'once a century', though? There were a couple of pandemics of similar scale in the second half of the twentieth century. And SARS, MERS, swine flu all might have turned into pandemics. And the changes in human population (growth, and interconnectedness) make pandemics considerably more likely. We'll be very lucky if this doesn't happen again in the next couple of decades.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
A coin doesnt have memory... We are witnessing in real time how difficult it is for a state to hand back powers once it has got used to exercising them. Even someone like Boris who would certainly have seen himself as a free marketing libertarian lite kind of person is persuaded of the case to retain power over people.
Looks like the Tories have an outside chance of getting the most votes. It may depend on relative turnout.
And of course postal votes may play a part this time
Will the Tories and Plaid be able to organise some sort of coalition to keep Labour out? Difficult to imagine it because their policies are so different.
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
They should dig a second full canal, like the Channel Tunnel.
Talking of major transport infrastructure - I just drove around the back of Euston Station for the first time in ages.
HS2 is now visibly smashing its way north. Epic scenes of heavy engineering, like the first big Victorian railways. Quite unsettling in a mixed way to see something talked of, for so long, actually happening. I suppose in the rear of my mind I still had the vague notion it might be cancelled. Clearly not.
Like the Bourne prints of almost two centuries ago?
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
I seem to recall being told in Dubai that they could be the top prize for forecasting at the race-track...... some Moslem issue with gambling ..... and were often just abandoned at the airport.
Yes, at the horse racing there are no bookies, but there’s a free to enter sweepstake. Everyone who gets all the winners goes into a hat, and they pick out prizewinners like a raffle.
The cars abandoned at the airport stories are different, they came from the 2009 recession, where people made redundant just left the country overnight rather than settle debts - which at the time could be a criminal matter.
"Boris Johnson has said "there is going to be a role" for COVID vaccine certification but suggested it might only be implemented once every adult in the UK has been offered a vaccine by the end of July."
I dislike the idea of vax passports but I don't see how we avoid them, at least temporarily
They will be obligatory for foreign holidays, and flights, which means most people will want one, so they can travel and vacation. Once that is accepted, and almost everyone has the vax pass app on their phones, other businesses will use the facility. To give reassurance to customers: domestic hotels, theatres, gyms, cinemas, any place where infection is likely. We can't stop private businesses doing this. The upside is that this will push the last vax refuseniks into accepting the jab
For pubs it should be optional, of course. Some might prefer not to demand the passport, so they can attract younger customers? Hard to say
The best we can hope for is that these passports are temporary. As the plague abates, and the bug becomes just another bug, fear will likewise recede, and they might fall out of use
I think the vax passport is an August 2021 - 2023 thing broadly for internal use in the UK
Yes, agreed. The world has been gravely traumatised by this horror - this is another reason people will DEMAND VaxAppPassports: as a bulwark against fear and anxiety. So they will happen.
This trauma will take years to heal, if ever. People will want to see at least two winters free of another wave before they feel particularly safe. 2022, 2023. By 2024 we may not need the passports, any more
Another consequence of the bug is that every country will copy South Korea. They did it best. That means monitored smartphones and consensual surveillance, real time track and trace, and proper, enforced quarantine. It's coming.
Disagree. While a huge tragedy for those affected, the vast majority of people have not had an association with Covid. I think that for those, Covid will be something that "happens to other people" (and let's think about the demographic that has been relatively unaffected).
Hence I think people will go party. Certainly amongst those I speak to the desire to go to the pub, meet up, and try to expunge this last year's privations is very strong.
Both can be true. Both urges can exist in the same person. eg me
I am fully determined to enjoy the fuck out of this coming summer. Go to pubs, restaurants, theatres, have a life, have fun, have a fling or two. I have saved money, and been rather lonely.
At the same time if offered a vaxpassapp I will eagerly accept. Because they will give me reassurance, especially on flights, and because they are a route BACK to that normal life
The idea that we will all move on and forget this is nice, but wrong. We will try and put it to the back of the mind, but governments will not allow us to forget, because it could and eventually will happen again, and we will need booster jabs for Covid mutants, and so on
The shadow of this terror will follow us for many years
We are of like mind. Will endure financially too.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
This has been a once in a century pandemic. Why do you think it will happen again and again?
I'm not saying I think it will. Only that it might. There are reasons to think that these will be more regular occurrences due to our unabated encroachment into rainforests. But, in any case, I only need to posit it as a hypothetical in support of the reductio ad absurdum argument.
I don't accept Selebian's WW2 analogy below, by the way. This is not even close.
Why 'once a century', though? There were a couple of pandemics of similar scale in the second half of the twentieth century. And SARS, MERS, swine flu all might have turned into pandemics. And the changes in human population (growth, and interconnectedness) make pandemics considerably more likely. We'll be very lucky if this doesn't happen again in the next couple of decades.
Yes, and look at the precedent that has been set! 2020: the year that homo sapiens shat itself.
The current incident is in about the worst place possible, in the southern section of single-canal running. The northern section had a second canal dug a few years ago, opened in 2015 from memory.
They should dig a second full canal, like the Channel Tunnel.
Talking of major transport infrastructure - I just drove around the back of Euston Station for the first time in ages.
HS2 is now visibly smashing its way north. Epic scenes of heavy engineering, like the first big Victorian railways. Quite unsettling in a mixed way to see something talked of, for so long, actually happening. I suppose in the rear of my mind I still had the vague notion it might be cancelled. Clearly not.
Like the Bourne prints of almost two centuries ago?
Precisely. And in exactly the same place. The view now is eerily similar to that print
Dickens famously describes these imperious scenes. Camden was formed by them - the four ‘castle’ pubs (Dublin, Edinboro, etc) were, allegedly, thus denoted because they told you which navvies drank where: scotch, Irish &c
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
I'd get you to send me one ,but you know, with these Devon lanes....
(There's an expression for vehicles down here, with wing-mirrors knocked off, big gouges down the near side, the paint and trim missing. They call it "Devon ready".....)
I hope no kids go out into the real world and repeat elmos question of any non-white friends they have....the hate speech police will be around immediately.
Hopefully we wont have a repeat of anything like in France, where the teacher was executed, and which it was later revealed hadnt actually shown any pictures of a muslim prophet.
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
I suppose the line gets crossed when it moves beyond "be proud of who you are" for some to "be ashamed of who you are" for others.
There have been some mentions of the idea of herd immunity.
So, if we assume that the vaccine is 75% effective at preventing infection and assume that the effect of the vaccine is simple* we can construct the following table
*the vaccine effect is simply a multiple on the original R number.
It's temptingly straightforward, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the dispersion number, k, makes it more complicated - but also very possibly better for us.
R being 3 or 4 is simply the mean of a heck of a spread with almost everyone below the R value (and usually significantly below) and a sparse handful way above it, bringing the average up.
So reducing the infectivity means that everything shifts left on that graph (simplistically). More and more people fall in the 0 column, and the 10+ bunch come down - and if the infectivity isn't linear, possibly a long way down.
Add to that the fact that for it to spread, superspreaders must "link up" with superspreaders in a sort of series of nodes of infection. The more that infectivity is reduced, the harder it is to "find" another superspreader. It peters out a lot quicker a lot more often, and when it does reach another superspreader, they, too, are inhibited with the number they'll reach.
It's sort of like giving us at least a double hit against the virus. It may be bollocks, but I do suspect that we'll find that R drops considerably faster than the simple calculation of transmission reduction.
(Everyone's free to quote this at me a couple of months down the line if it does, indeed, turn out to be a load of old twaddle)
Yes, I agree with this. Most SEIR models are differential equations, which treat populations as infinitely divisible. In such a model the superspreaders are always connected, albeit lightly. Better, but more computationally expensive, are stochastic models that can truly capture the probability of extinction of the virus within various groups. I know that the much-mentioned Imperial model used a deterministic model, and do recall seeing at least one UK model that was stochastic, but I don't recall who else was using what.
It's been clear to me for a long time that overdispersion is a significant factor in COVID, well before people were talking about it: this disease needed a "critical mass" to take off, a classic sign of overdispersion. By the way, dispersion is not entirely captured by the "k" parameter, and very different epidemics can result from the same value of "k".
What we don't know is how vaccination affects dispersion. I think it's biologically plausible that vaccinated superspreaders remain superspreaders (but vaccinated others are resistant to catching it from them), but equally plausible that vaccination turns superspreaders into mediocrespreaders. We also don't know whether superspreaders are also supercatchers, and whether vaccination affects this. (And we don't know whether different vaccines are different in these respects.) It will be extremely difficult ever to determine these, other than very indirectly, and we may never know.
For what it's worth, I tentatively share your prediction that, at a certain point, we'll see R drop rather suddenly. The flip side is that we may see bad outbreaks amongst under-vaccinated groups.
--AS
Superspreaders - is this mainly due to their behaviour (mixing a lot) or their shedding prowess when they do mix?
I can confidently say no PBer watches more Sesame St than I do. It is on our tv for hours every day.
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
To me it seems well-meant, but dangerous. A step away from enabling white supremacism. ‘Whiteness is an important part of who I am, I am proud of being white’. Why shouldn’t someone say that in response? Perfectly legitimate. Yet not great?
I suppose the assumption is that white people don’t need the encouragement because they aren’t teased as kids/held back as young adults by their skin colour as black people are. Might be unhelpful, as it kind of implicitly accepts victim status, but also is well intentioned and might help. I don’t know, all I know is Sesame St have been banging this drum for decades anyway, and their motives seem good
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
I seem to recall being told in Dubai that they could be the top prize for forecasting at the race-track...... some Moslem issue with gambling ..... and were often just abandoned at the airport.
Yes, at the horse racing there are no bookies, but there’s a free to enter sweepstake. Everyone who gets all the winners goes into a hat, and they pick out winners like a raffle.
The cars abandoned at the airport stories are different, they came from the 2009 recession, where people made redundant just left the country overnight rather than settle debts - which at the time could be a criminal matter.
Most people never see £50 notes. Perhaps an entrepreneur will knock out framed fifties to the gay tech nerd war historian crossover demographic. I'd buy one.
Inadvisable to carry them. They are regularly forged.
Are the new fifties plastic like the other notes, and will ATMs be stocking them?
One thing you notice when living and visiting different places, is that the UK £20 note is a tiny amount of money given its the biggest thing an ATM will give you.
In UAE, as an example, the smallest note you’ll get from an ATM is 100dhm (£20). The largest is 1,000dhm!
Isn't that because you're all buying gold-plated lambos with cash?
LOL. The most expensive car I’ve bought with cash was only a $100k McLaren.
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
Just before covid a friend of mine spent $57 million on a private jet
FIFTY SEVEN MILLION
It is, by a vast distance, the biggest single purchase I’ve ever personally encountered. I know a fair few rich people, but none of them have spent anything near that on a single item, not even a house
I asked him what it was like writing the cheque (no idea why he cut a cheque). He said it was ‘weird’
Why write a cheque for something that costs $57m? Surely that would normally come out of petty cash?
Comments
Hmm. Australia has an excellent efficient e-visa system which generally relies on smartphones. I presume there is a workaround for non-smartphone-owners, I don’t know what it is
South Korea’s excellent covid control system relies on smartphones
Frankly, if you are too old, poor or stupid to own a smartphone, you’re going to die soon anyway, so you might as well get the bug and croak now; this is just the bug speeding up natural selection.
https://unherd.com/2020/05/why-we-remember-wars-but-forget-plagues/
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1375098549340409862?s=20
Tyne & Wear used to have an integrated transport system which used buses on the periphery and interchange to the metro to get to the centre. Foolishly Thatcher ended that and interchange fares went so private operators clogged the city centre with buses.
Their target audience would probably love it.
Because you are right - if it doesn't then it doesn't matter if people have or have not been vaccinated in terms of the danger they would pose to others.
Someone asymptomatic who has been vaccinated would as likely as not spread or not spread the virus in exactly the same way as someone asymptomatic who hasn't been vaccinated.
It's been clear to me for a long time that overdispersion is a significant factor in COVID, well before people were talking about it: this disease needed a "critical mass" to take off, a classic sign of overdispersion. By the way, dispersion is not entirely captured by the "k" parameter, and very different epidemics can result from the same value of "k".
What we don't know is how vaccination affects dispersion. I think it's biologically plausible that vaccinated superspreaders remain superspreaders (but vaccinated others are resistant to catching it from them), but equally plausible that vaccination turns superspreaders into mediocrespreaders. We also don't know whether superspreaders are also supercatchers, and whether vaccination affects this. (And we don't know whether different vaccines are different in these respects.) It will be extremely difficult ever to determine these, other than very indirectly, and we may never know.
For what it's worth, I tentatively share your prediction that, at a certain point, we'll see R drop rather suddenly. The flip side is that we may see bad outbreaks amongst under-vaccinated groups.
--AS
“People’s vote”, what a bunch of wallies
Still amuses me that the USA has a $1 note.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9401527/Furious-parents-protest-Prophet-Muhammad-cartoon-shown-class.html
You need to be following this Guy. He did a 10 minute video about that, and a couple a week of similar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxbVTozEoa0
Great trip though.
Institute for Governemnt: "...even though the costs of coronavirus this year are enormous – over £300bn – these could easily be dwarfed by much bigger costs in the future, although these are even more uncertain than the costs this year"
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainers/cost-coronavirus
Those who think the government has charted the right course, with compulsory rather than voluntary lockdowns, need to answer the question of what happens in, say, ten years when a different virus causes another pandemic - and then another a period after that.
Putting aside the dubious legality of pausing liberal democracy and the rights and liberties it entails, it seems obvious to me that the response has been an error because simple philosophy can be used to expose it as such. If you believe that it was right to put us in so much debt by the extreme prioritisation of death stats over any other considerations then you are committed to arguing for a similar policy response when it happens again - and again - and again. This is obviously impossible, so the initial response must have itself been an error.
*not really
(Not for me, for an acquaintance in the UK, I shipped it back for him. Supercars depreciate faster over here than they do in Europe, so there’s bargains to be had if you can deal with the shipping time and paperwork).
But the failure was not to find some other way to control the spread of the virus. That is what we need to prepare for in the future.
Trying to tough it out without a lockdown, after other attempts to control the virus has failed, would have been worse.
If pandemics of a similar severity pop up every few years then we won't be able to do this every time. We'll have to adapt and do it differently - get damn good at tracking and isolating, for example, build up mass test capacity. If we get more of these, we'll all have to take the South Korea route if we want to have any kind of life. If it's another hundred years to the next big pandemic (as it was since the last) then we can absolutely have the same response again. Why not?
Even if you’re vaccinated, the airline, your country of origin, and your destination may still refuse you travel if you test positive.
Try using your 1,000dhm note in a taxi, as I did the very first time I arrived here.
FIFTY SEVEN MILLION
It is, by a vast distance, the biggest single purchase I’ve ever personally encountered. I know a fair few rich people, but none of them have spent anything near that on a single item, not even a house
I asked him what it was like writing the cheque (no idea why he cut a cheque). He said it was ‘weird’
Can't; says I've had one from GP, so can't book elsewhere. Another couple of weeks before the twelve week deadline, though.
Here’s a good Bloomberg article about the oil market in this context.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/gadfly/suez-canal-blocked-what-a-lengthy-closure-will-mean-for-the-oil-price
LOL
HS2 is now visibly smashing its way north. Epic scenes of heavy engineering, like the first big Victorian railways. Quite unsettling in a mixed way to see something talked of, for so long, actually happening. I suppose in the rear of my mind I still had the vague notion it might be cancelled. Clearly not.
A lot of epidemiologists believe we were intensely lucky in avoiding one since 1918. We dodged a number of bullets. SARS, MERS, etc
Of course the next Covid doesn’t have to be nearly as bad, if we all learn from East Asia
https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1375108998404399114?s=20
Anyone testing positive before their return flight will get to spend two weeks more on ‘holiday’, maybe in a public facility or confined to their hotel room at their own expense.
This is what everyone is missing when it comes to holidays. In my part of the world it’s been an ongoing story for the past year.
I don't accept Selebian's WW2 analogy below, by the way. This is not even close.
Ed Balls/David Miliband/Andy Burnham could be the ones who are untarnished by “the Peoples Vote” and Corbyn - maybe Labour should try and tempt them back into the Commons
There were a couple of pandemics of similar scale in the second half of the twentieth century.
And SARS, MERS, swine flu all might have turned into pandemics.
And the changes in human population (growth, and interconnectedness) make pandemics considerably more likely.
We'll be very lucky if this doesn't happen again in the next couple of decades.
https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/1830s-drawings-of-the-london-and-birmingham-railway#
The cars abandoned at the airport stories are different, they came from the 2009 recession, where people made redundant just left the country overnight rather than settle debts - which at the time could be a criminal matter.
https://twitter.com/earlkralik/status/1375109034727120898?s=21
Dickens famously describes these imperious scenes. Camden was formed by them - the four ‘castle’ pubs (Dublin, Edinboro, etc) were, allegedly, thus denoted because they told you which navvies drank where: scotch, Irish &c
Therefore I don’t see this as news. It is relentless in trying to push acceptance & kindness, with several songs encouraging pride in black skin and hair. “I love my hair, there’s nothing else that can compare ... with my hair!”
These are on old YouTube vids so not recent additions. I am not complaining, I choose for my son to watch it, just surprised it’s a news item
Wait until the EU find out that more than 100% of our 75-79 year olds have had the vaccine.
(There's an expression for vehicles down here, with wing-mirrors knocked off, big gouges down the near side, the paint and trim missing. They call it "Devon ready".....)
https://twitter.com/DarrenEuronews/status/1375110747261394947?s=20